Safety

I've been thinking a lot about "safety" this week. How we want things to be nice and neat. Tidy. Safe.

There is safety in the familiar. An object. A sense of space. Pleasing color. Yet in my studio I live in a world with no object, no space, and colors that create optical vibrations that may not be viewed as comfortable. As I grapple with making work that is not safe, I find that I too long for something "comfortable." My knee-jerk reaction is to throw in a geometric shape, yet once I do it feels forced and controlling. Flat. Superficial. Placating.

I'm uncomfortable with my uncomfortablness.

And perhaps that's exactly where I need to be. How can I make the uncomfortable, comfortable without succumbing to my own basal compulsive need for safety and consolation?

Why is this important to me?

It arises from my own need to make the unfamiliar feel familiar. To reconnect with something I don’t remember. To make the unknown, feel safe.

So here it is that I pause, in the tension between comfort and apprehension. Between the known and the unknown.

Studio work this week...

These are all in various states of development. Some just the grounds on which I will continue to build. I feel naked posting incomplete work like this but perhaps, in subsequent posts, seeing the process in how I manage (or mismanage) the tension between safety and fear of the unknown will reveal something.

Yeah, okay -- talk about geometric shapes! Something dramatic is going to go on top of this, but I don't what know yet. This feels far too controlled and contrite...



This one is a little further along, yet here too, I drew a spiral pattern on top of which I am using as a system to go back in and add color. Once I finish adding the rest of the color I don't know what I'll do, by then the geometric shape may be too predominant...



This one I just started last night. Again, not sure what I'll do next. I keep gravitating towards adding some kind of geometric pattern, but on this one I am really going to try and hold the tension and not go there. We'll see....



Another ground to build on. I have some ideas for it, but they are gravitating towards adding form that may feel too "object-like." This one may sit for a while before I figure out next steps. Besides right now it already feels too planned!



Oh and this one is speaks to my need for comfort in space. When I first got this ground completed I was really excited about it. But as I have looked at it all week, it too feels controlled already. So now I'm trying to figure out how to have the space yet put something uncomfortable on top of it to skew the perspective.