In the studio I am continuing on the Medusa Complexity Series, I find each painting moves me to the next painting with an urgency that is captivating and fulfilling all at once. The Medusa for me is a powerful metaphor of life , as there are endless adjectives to describe her plight as well as life, both are beautiful, scary, frightening, interesting, captivating, cunning, wild, trapped, alone, threatened, threatening and the list goes on and on. I am captivated with the idea of shaded eyes, perhaps it is a way to remove some of the fear of a medusa, if you cannot see the eyes , then perhaps you will not be turned to stone. I am delving into the domain of head coverings and the fact that they much like Medusa's Snake encrusted hair, all simply shade the eyes. It is written that the eyes are the windows into the soul and perhaps this shading is hiding more than we know. Mystique is created somewhere in the darkness of the shaded portals of the soul. The darkness gives way to mysteries of both life and emotion when we cannot fathom the depths. I feel a strong involvement in this series that goes beyond the superficial surface of the paintings. I want to capture something that is intriguing and beguiling enough to appeal to many viewers on many levels, I want to make these paintings something that will be strangely familiar . This series will have some complete figures but mostly it is the face that I am focused on in this group. The face is more personal and intimate with the viewer in these paintings than in some of my previous paintings and this intimacy and mystery is exactly what I want to convey to the viewer. We can all relate to the figure in our own and very unique and personal ways, this enables the familiar, the odd head coverings and shaded eyes gives me the strange in this series.
by Cathy Hegman
beeswax, oil, and damar resin on wood
I am working in many mediums in this series as an attempt to prove to myself that my subject can transcend the medium and find just as much meaning in wax as in watercolor. I am working in many sizes for the same reason. This series is teaching me about myself even more than ever, I am aware in my art of the need to put the meaning ahead of the methodology and technique. I am finding more and more now I am working seamlessly from one medium to another, while keeping my mind on the gist of the painting and not some technique or trick I might have learned along the way to produce a satisfactory painting result. I am foremost telling myself on a minute by minute basis that these are related by the soul and subject and not by the pigment and surface of each painting. This series has opened the doors of experimentation in my work and has made the transitions from one medium to the next much smoother in transition than in my previous series of paintings. I keep my mind totally open to new possibilities within the subject and its ability to conjure up related but new themes for each painting. I strongly advocate painting in a series as a good way to experiment with your mind and your mediums, and find more of yourself in your work. Art is part what you know but mostly what you feel and long for...
This series will be shown in November at an Exhibition at Jackson Street Gallery in Ridgeland, Mississippi.
Cathy Hegman
AWS,NWS,MSWS,MOWS,SAA,SW,ISAP
www.cathyhegman.com
www.youtube.com/hegman1
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