Do you believe in universal images? Are there animals, symbols, signs that crop up in art and dreams the world over regardless of culture, religious disposition or politics? Do they transcend time? And do those same images represent the same things to each participant?
How does this make you feel? Do you scoff at such mumbo-jumbo? Or are you comforted knowing you are not alone in the human condition, that ultimately you are bound inextricably to the family of humankind? Does it change your politics? Or how you look at art?
This is the time of year for such contemplation and – oh ho! – I am admitting another link in the march of human development! The fear of extinction parallels the Winter Solstice – the shared ancient panic at the death of light.
Belinda Bryce just sent me images of her new paintings. She marries unexpected colors in ways that always knock me out and combines pigment with melted beeswax – encaustic painting. The result is depth and surface value that’s wonderfully tactile and she makes the most of the medium.
As for subject, she’s in the hip pocket right now of the rabbit fetish. I immediately jump to the symbolic meaning of rabbits = hearth, home, procreation, femininity, and fertility.
Here’s the question: are rabbits merely the artists’ theme of the week (think back to dogs, often with bloody fangs, birds, especially black crows)?
Or are rabbits one of those intuitive symbols too strong to resist?
(Belinda’s solo exhibition opens in February at the Little Theater Café.)
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No silly platitudes from me about spring being right around the corner! It’s really cold. The scene from my window is black, white and gray – maybe as monotone as nature ever becomes. I am wallowing in ice-ness. So is my brother in Tulsa, Oklahoma, my friend in Florida and people in China that I don’t know yet. But be hopeful; we all looked out our windows on December 23 and voila!, the sun didn’t die after all.
Happy New Year!
