Archetypal Shapes: a look at the Botanics
When I was in the studio trying to break a long fallow time that followed the pandemic, I gave myself a day in which to paint wildly and entirely free of discernment. Flower forms erupted in the foreground! It was shocking and exciting to me, having painted in abstraction for decades.
The Edge of the Low Rainforest, acrylic paint, spray paint and Sumi ink on raw canvas, 66x137
Surprising, but over these past months I’ve realized that the simple shape of a bloom very familiar. I took a look at my 2020 exhibition at the Daum Museum titled Instinct, curated by Thomas Piché, and found this form in nearly every painting..
Cropped images of blooms from my 2020 exhibition at the Daum Museum titled “Instinct”
I then looked images of older paintings and remembered that hundreds of these similar shapes have run through my paintings from the beginning.
I began to realize that this is true with the artists I’ve studied deeply, these sorts of personal archetypal images show up throughout their life’s work. I’m thinking of a few: Cy Twombly, Robert Zakanitch, Jorge Galindo, Joan Miro, Jackie Saccoccio .
Who knows where these archetypes come from, perhaps childhood, or DNA, or from somewhere deep in the heart.
It has been a joyful experience to paint this series. I feel it winding down. This newest painting is perhaps the end of the crescendo, 11’ long, unabashedly indulging in flora.
Midnight in the Garden of Luminescence, Acrylic paint on raw canvas, 78x134