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"Sudden Arrival'" was a long time in gestation. Originally conceived in 1991 as a composite of etching and lithograph proofs, with twigs representing falling trees; this work evolved over more than a decade. After losing, at that time, numerous friends to AIDS, the work was intended to be a parallel statement comparing Dutch Elm Disease and AIDS and the inability to find a cure for either. In a mentality of frustration and defeatism, the work was to be called "Why Can't Anyone Stop the Dutch Elm Disease?" After losing my own partner in 1996, ushering in increasing despair over the growing number of friends taken, by then 68; the work languished on my drawing desk. I could not muster the energy to complete the work and it was eventually set aside under my printing press. While in woods sketching for other works, I would lay on sun drenched soil, longing to be close to those taken. But with that act, and the compliment to it, "Looking Up"; resignation and resolution to the cycles of Nature eventually arrived. This work hence presents the forms of nature's mysterious patterns of recycling and renewal. What often seems sudden is only so because we have failed to perceive smaller transitions and changes. Doesn't Winter always seem to arrive suddenly? Doesn't Death? Here Winter's seeming rapid arrival is presented, pushing Fall along its way, yet Fall's "giving way" is more gradual: varied forms, shapes and changing color, falling leaves, varied skies, winds and bare branches break through the frame in which we attempt containment. |
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