ARTIST’S STATEMENT- Negative Capability
Only the hand that erases can write the truth. Christina Wimant
We can’t do with something; we can do with something that isn’t. Gustav Sobin
Sometimes, when we pay enough attention, we notice the universe is giving us several messages on the same subject. Perhaps this is the law of attraction at work. I have been struck recently, with the observation of how one new idea or thought invites discoveries or examples of that fresh insight. They seem to appear everywhere, as if the simple act of noticing brings awareness to light.
Recently my studio partner, Nora Poole, was assisting me with the collage I planned to include in this show. She pointed out that leaving a couple of spaces blank makes the piece more balanced and interesting. At the same time, I have been reading about a principal called the vacancy effect in which an atom missing from a crystal makes the crystal stronger.
Chogyam Trungpa, in his book, True Perception, the Path of Dharma, speaks of the need for any artist to prepare herself before beginning a new work. “Intention”, he writes, “must begin with look at the ground, that is to see everything that exists, out of which, by a process of subtraction, the art emerges and appears to just happen rather than to be contrived.”
All of which brings us to this, our annual November Homewood Studios Resident Artists show. In casting about for a title, we remembered last year’s show, Holding Space. Given that we were then a few days away from the presidential election of 2024, we eight artists were interested in holding out for possibilities that had not yet occurred and could not be reliably predicted. We know how that worked out, so now we have the opportunity to make art with an idea towards exploring what’s possible, what’s not predictable, and what might be left out in order to make that stronger difference.
We find our theme and title in a letter by the Romantic poet, John Keats, who in 1817 wrote to his brother about the capacity for artists to be in a state of doubt and mystery without anxiously seeking an explanation, about a cultural and artistic capacity, to live “in uncertainties, mysteries, doubts, without any irritable reaching after fact and reason". It is the ability to embrace ambiguity and to resist the urge for quick, rational explanations which allows deeper creative insight and openness to what will, inevitably, emerge. In short, a receptiveness to, even a welcoming of, what we do not know.
In my view art always begins with questions, including the question of composition. What to put in and what to leave out. Collage is especially receptive to this concept where one image is laid over another, often leaving just enough of the underneath image to be perceivable. Any form of art making, of course, involves both negative and positive space and issues of placement, of composition, and so seem an appropriate ground for theme for our show.
George Roberts