Decomposition

“They’re compost,” my husband Hal said, when I showed him my paintings. Scraps, rinds, parings, shells, ….. the protective detritus of living matter.” To which I added, “the skins of things.”

And then he came up with the perfect idea: “It’s a midden pile! Leavings! The garbage of an earlier civilization!” 

We had been talking earlier in the day about my painting experiment. I had been working on a series of 16 small paintings that, to me, represented the conditions of growth. I was thinking about the paintings as seeds of change, but I ended up being more taken with the idea of decomposition. 

Composition

I keep coming back to these pomegranates, wanting to crack the code of their order and disorder. I’m trying to capture the crazy insides revealed when the fruit is sliced through at different angles. Lots of overlapping in the drawing - uneven rows, no attempt at coherence. Because if nature couldn’t achieve it, why should I?  

I painted over the charcoal with matte medium and everything darkened and smeared. I’m realizing that the drawing looks a lot like a compost pile - where the pieces are no longer intact. They have begun to decompose, melt into one another - through, under, over. I think this is where much of the interest lies: in the confusion, the freedom to no longer have to hold together as separate parts, but to intermingle, to really get down to it.

It was a relief to not worry as I drew, to not feel like I had to respect the boundaries of the pieces, but to put things where I wanted to, for my own pleasure.