Tuesday, May 15, 2012

Hero descends headlong to oblivion in ecstatic rage





As the tulips in my studio faded, I thought again of the memento mori.  So it was natural to do a skull redux with the last petals of the tulips.  The dry petals literally fell off the flowers and curled, their colour intensified.  I imagined them falling out of skulls eyes;  Weeping flower petals.

It conjures up a whole lot of poetry for me: Baudelaire's  Les Fleurs du mal; james joyce's "apologize, apologize pluck out his eyes" and the wondrous drunken rant in Malcolm Lowrey's Under the Volcano, where in the day of the dead scene, the hero descends headlong to oblivion in an ecstatic rage.

And yet, it can all be beautiful too, as an image.


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