"Pennywise...."

 
1. ‘Pennywise….”
 
Mixed Media Assemblage on Wood. 2014
 
Dimensions: 31 x 14 x 11 inches/79 x 36 x 28 cm.

       A box without a lid, plain reinforced plywood, no grain, no impurities, no distinguishing features besides the serial numbers stenciled on its side and the Central Bank of Barbados logo on the lid.
A conceptual minimalist would have left it just so, an empty moneybox is, in itself, a potent symbol of our current crisis.
But, I am a painter, by ecstatic nature and unrestrained habit.

It is what I am and what I do.

So, the plain plywood box presented a 3d challenge, which had to be met with restructuring of thought and retraining of hand.
There were all these obsolete one cent pieces, which I had collected, but not got around to returning to source in time for the Central Bank return deadline.
I steeped them in a candle, the centerpiece of the work.
A clay pot and a sliver of mahogany formed the base for the candle. A carved and painted image hovered above it, torn and discarded pages from a grand daughter’s math exercise books settled,
like dry-season leaves, on the floor of the box. Rusty chicken wire and delicate lace competed with conflicting textures. The tones were softly wooden and ‘paperish’- I could have left it so.
But, I am a painter, by nature and habit, and so it was, that purples, pinks, a somewhat toxic green and accents of gold found their way into the work and changed its character from muted assemblage to  aggressive icon.
Whether this aggression is a threat or a promise is not clear.
That decision is up to the viewer
 

2. “Gone but not forgotten”-Lament for a lost coin’.
 
Mixed Media Assemblage on wood. 2014.
 
Dimensions: 31 x 14 inches/ 79 x 36 cm.
         
           And then there was the lid, without a box, an altogether different challenge. Smooth, pale and encased in a tin border……it was annoyingly bland.
So, I roughed up its surface with a wood-cut  iron, saturated it with a midnight- deep-sea blue and populated it with things found, made and manufactured. 
The one-cent pieces, chicken wire and traces of lace referred briefly to the estranged box, but the lid quickly took on a life and character of its own.
Copper nails, brass screws, and temple bells, all  ‘metalled’ cousins of the one cent coin, joined fragments of singed canvas and sea fan in a harmonious homage to all that is lost, fragmented and discarded in the maelstrom of life-and yet manages to stay afloat and ahead.
The core narrative of our Caribbean.

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'Pennywise.." Detail.

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"Gone but not forgotten-lament for a lost coin".

        

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