The question of fate or destiny is one of the great themes of western culture. Starting with Oedipus and Achilles, and through to the modern debate about nature versus nurture, human beings have always wrestled with the question of how much we can control our own lives. We crave control, an orderly and explicable existence in which our efforts are rewarded exactly as they deserve. On the other hand we must acknowledge, especially with the advent of genetic manipulation, that there are some things that we cannot shape in the way we wish. Even ruling out exterior chance, our inability to know or avoid the future, the interior building blocks of our own personalities determine our lives in ways that may make us comfortable. Even if we manage to construct a life that is safe from the outside world, or at least seems like it is, we are never safe from ourselves, and in the end we would not wish to be. Fate also brings change for the better and peace can only come from acceptance of our selves.
Through visual allegory, Raw Materials explores the search for safety in various states of opposition to the idea of fate or nature. The constructed space becomes a representation of the lives that we build. We create walls to keep us safe from the elements outside, over which we have no control. The rooms are juxtaposed with the outside world, specifically to the trees and the forest. The woods have been in myth and legend the area of least human control; they are the darkness out of which the wolves come. They are also the place where the hero seeks his fortune. In my paintings the natural world represents change as well as fate. The trees growing out of the left in Where do we go from here? Contribute to the idea of a living space while the absolute absence of natural elements, including a light source, in Everything in its Proper Place are part of the failure of the space. In that painting the figure seems to be in a state of suspended animation without a way to escape. She may be in control, in possession of a neatly delineated space, but she is not going anywhere.
This idea of the necessity of change contrasts with the necessity of a human imposition order. To survive change we must be able to react and we can not do that if we refuse to act as human beings. The figure in Never the Same is falling willy nilly as opposed to the controlled dive of the shadow in Where do we go from here? Her desire to ignore the facts and figures to the left robs her of agency. Every time we look at something we define it and a denial of this denies the natural even as we try to embrace it. There is something positive in the search for control; it does not need to close us in. By making each half, the natural and the controlled, visually attractive, I am seeking to emphasize this balance. Like most of real life there is no easily defined good or bad. The figure in Conditions Favorable for Development could be imprisoning herself away from nature, or, like a hibernating animal, she could be protected by nature waiting for spring.
Ultimately all the paintings are about a search for balance. Extremes are easy for humans-it is finding a place in the middle that is hard. Aristotle describes virtue as moderation in all things, and I suppose this body of work is in agreement with that.