I've been thinking about time. It's tricky, as we know-- an elusive, immaterially real concept that entwines us as we live each moment, day, year of our lives. Time marks our memory, our mirrors, and leaves traces on everything in our world. Like the wind, we "see" time only in its effects, its collaterals.
Then there's the fairly uniform way we mark time by clocks and calendars. Civilization must agree on some things at least, though we take our liberties there too, like the idiosyncracies of local yes-or-no "daylight-savings time". And the wildly different personal timescapes of individuals. Some are highly compartmentalized, others not.
Me, for example, especially at this time of my life. I experience time as a rapidly moving conveyor that blends many elements backwards and forwards. Each minute is vast with so much flowing into it. Yet, I'm also acutely aware of the relentless ebb of minutes, the finality that will be reached... who knows when.
For most of us, looking back through time's traces in photo albums, old magazines, and even historical art work is often a moving experience. Given that time is nonstationary, looking "through time" necessarily moves us from now to then, wherever and whenever those places exist.
Art history has always seemed a treasure-chest to me. How it cycles back and forth between stylistic preferences and different "avant-gardes". How amazing break-throughs seem to occur alongside advancing tradition. How styles change, are assimilated or absorbed into new treatments. How old things come alive again in new contexts.
I'm pleased to have this work, Lady Cranach Likes Early Modern in an exhibit of Federation of Canadian Arists (click for Retro show). It's my take on a bust-portrait by Lucas Cranach that I've appreciated for its outrageous costume and stylistic slyness --re-envisioned in this painting with a different face, lower body, and setting.
The headress and upper clothing, especially the sleeves, identify her as a Northern Renaissance Cranach -- but the face, setting, and mixed stylistic devices used in my painting play anachronistically with art history. My intent is to convey, more generally, the convergence of many epochs in painting, which typically builds from the past, acts in the present, and thinks of the future. I really enjoy this spiraling of art-history and different styles.
Time moves on... in many directions.
Then there's the fairly uniform way we mark time by clocks and calendars. Civilization must agree on some things at least, though we take our liberties there too, like the idiosyncracies of local yes-or-no "daylight-savings time". And the wildly different personal timescapes of individuals. Some are highly compartmentalized, others not.
Me, for example, especially at this time of my life. I experience time as a rapidly moving conveyor that blends many elements backwards and forwards. Each minute is vast with so much flowing into it. Yet, I'm also acutely aware of the relentless ebb of minutes, the finality that will be reached... who knows when.
For most of us, looking back through time's traces in photo albums, old magazines, and even historical art work is often a moving experience. Given that time is nonstationary, looking "through time" necessarily moves us from now to then, wherever and whenever those places exist.
Art history has always seemed a treasure-chest to me. How it cycles back and forth between stylistic preferences and different "avant-gardes". How amazing break-throughs seem to occur alongside advancing tradition. How styles change, are assimilated or absorbed into new treatments. How old things come alive again in new contexts.
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| painting by Janet Strayer, 36"x36", acrylic on canvas |
I'm pleased to have this work, Lady Cranach Likes Early Modern in an exhibit of Federation of Canadian Arists (click for Retro show). It's my take on a bust-portrait by Lucas Cranach that I've appreciated for its outrageous costume and stylistic slyness --re-envisioned in this painting with a different face, lower body, and setting.
 |
| painting by Lucas Cranach the Elder |
Time moves on... in many directions.
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You can read and see more about creative life, travels, tips and creative adventures by this itinerant artist at Creative Life News at https://www.janetstrayer.com
Regards, Janet
