The Making of ‘Force of Nature’
I had thought, in the past and in my deep naivete, that creation of an artwork was clean, tidy, spiritually fulfilling, easy, and in all ways, a kind process.
My recently completed artwork ‘Force of Nature’ came initially, from wanting to do something simple, ‘easy’ if you will. So I played. Made a series of small quick sculptures; purposefully, with little forethought. It was fun and rewarding. No plan (at least not a grand one), and no schedule. This became my ‘Forest of Small Things’. When I didn’t have time to make anything grand, I did the small, simple things, that eventually would make the forest. A forest that expressed my creativity.
I had been through a physically and emotionally demanding time. I was creatively depleted. I was depleted. I was stuck.
My forest grew as I experimented. There were no corners…only curves. The curves grew. The image of a flow and a splash and the movement of water emerged. Piece by piece, a freeze-frame, a stop-motion progression.
And then came the grand idea…from the forest of small things. No irony there. A large multi-piece work of ceramic on glass, and later wood, that appeared almost as an act of immaculate conception, but was of course, my brain reaching again for the desire to create a piece of some technical difficulty and with impact, by the nature of its size and deceptively calm expression.
It was messy! I used a new adhesive that threatened in one frantic last-ditch afternoon to explode over places it shouldn’t, that threatened the grand plan just before the stroke of midnight.
It had taken some time to find the right wood, to settle on the piece, to admire the forklift making light work of it all, to have it cut to the right size by my willing and able partner, to make the split battens for hanging. To get the rhythm and positioning right with the caulking gun, (to not break anything!), AND to continually rise up and down the ladder to get the same perspective as the eventual viewer. The dining table taken over again, by me, the picture of calm, easy creativity.
It’s the challenge you see. The plan, the ‘cleverness’, the testing of boundaries, the experimentation. The trial. And the exhilaration of completion.
My forest has grown. Of small and large. The landscape has expanded. And I can smile. I can smile at the ambiguities of my own endeavours. The contradictions and ironies are clear.
And the ideas, small and large, continue to flow.
