Unfolding Meaning
I wondered what was next. I admired the art that came from the great figurative tradition, popularly called realistic painting. Who can look at the sculptures of Michelangelo, the paintings of Rembrandt, the still lifes of Chardin and Morandi, and not be struck by the shock of recognition of the people and items depicted? I wondered how to take that tradition, thousands of years old, and make it new again for myself and for the viewer. Unlike previous generations, our eyes are flooded with images. Yet our mass media, with images that even move and talk, seems to flatten out ideas. My images needed to have depth.
In western culture ideas are often explored in great depths in our written classics. One of the first courses I was required to take as a student at the Maryland Institute College of Art was in calligraphy. There I learned about the deep love many have of the beautiful letter forms culture and tradition has handed down to us, and which so often combine our great classics with a beauty that makes our enjoyment of the written word an experience of rich visual art as well.
This was echoed when I worked for sign companies later in life, and learned to rest words in excellent design. To bring ideas from the commercial world into the fine arts is something artists since Picasso have been doing, and for good reason, many terrific visual ideas can be found there. However, words can take over a painting and make a piece of visual art as flat and as limiting to ideas as the mass media I have criticized earlier. I needed to find a way to use words artfully. I needed them, but to point to mysteries. Otherwise they would block the way to them.
At the time when I looked for a vision of where my art was to go, some friends who were living in Paris for a year invited me to come and visit them and to see the city. It was a wonderful time in a beautiful place where I found the people to be warm and welcoming. One of my goals while there was to explore the cathedrals and enjoy the glories of gothic architecture. I spent a day at Notre Dame, and found the abundant wonders of the sculpture and the beauty of the space to be for me an arrow pointing to the character of God. When I took a break from looking at the cathedral as art and went to a small chapel in the building to pray I saw what was to become for me an image unfolding the future of my art.
As I looked up, I watched the local women in the chapel, earnestly praying for help in what seemed desperate situations. Often weeping, they would write their intentions on the statues in the chapel, statues which were blackened from many years of carrying the needs of the people in this way. As I thought of this powerful memory of these women writing on the statues, it dawned on me that my path in my work would be one of combining many of the visual traditions handed down to me. I would combine realistic images with abstraction, and combine written words with images of people. Abstract webs of color could balance diverse elements and add mystery and meaning that would overlap and enhance the meaning introduced by realistic images and carefully chosen written words.
In those early thoughts, my idea was to combine words, images, color, drips, and the rest in order to make art that would take the viewer from one experience of sight to another. When you look at a picture it's a very different experience than if you read a text. The information is even processed in different parts of the brain. With abstract elements your brain has even more information to absorb. My intention was to get people to jump from one source of information to another, and take in the meaning behind the work by combining the experience of all elements. I thought that I could create an image that builds a new storehouse of ideas in the viewer's mind, much like the experience of reading a novel.
Now my paintings are images that deliberately take time to unfold in the mind of the viewer. As you live with these images your mind has time to explore. You take in new details and weigh the meaning of each discovered element, like the archeologists at Newgrange, making sense of the issues touched in the painting, and building a library of meaning within your mind, where ideas grow and unfold to their natural dimensions. But this is only a beginning, because ideas explored in depth always lead like an arrow to mystery, mystery as strong as the nature of light itself. Light makes it possible to enjoy the written word, to explore my paintings, and to see clearly in the deepest part of Newgrange at the darkest time of the year.
Years ago, I took a trip to Ireland and visited an ancient burial mound which is now called Newgrange. The burial mound itself is as old as the pyramids, both Newgrange and the Great Pyramid at Giza are thought to be built around 2,500 BCE, although Newgrange may be a few centuries older. It is a Bronze Age monument, built before the Celts came to Ireland. The Celts folded the burial mound into their mythology, calling it Bruigh na Bóinne, the home of Oengus, also known as Mac ind Óg, son of the Daghdha, who was the chief god of the Celts.
As the ancient monument caught the interest of modern scholars,
archaeologists brushed away the webs of legend. Their excavations cleared away the layers of earth that covered the ancient site and unfolded details about the monument itself and the people who built it. One of the things they discovered, and the aspect of the monument that has made it famous, is a box over the entry into the burial mound. It looks like a transom over a doorway. They found that on the sunrise of the winter solstice, the darkest time of the year, the morning light pours through this window box and fills the interior chambers with radiant light.
Other features of the monument continue to be wrapped in mystery as they are wrapped in age. For example, we don’t know what the ancients were saying when they decorated the curb stone in front of the entrance with spiraling lines. Speculation runs from theories that this is a depiction of water to the possibility that this is a map of the major burial mounds of the Boyne valley, of which Newgrange is the largest.
This spiral is also found carved into the rock on the interior walls of the monument. For me, mystery piles upon mystery as I notice that this same symbol is used in other early cultures in other times and in other places, such as with the Anasazi of the American southwest. Is this a symbol so simple and elemental that people everywhere used it in their art? Is this a design idea so old that it traveled with ancient people as they migrated throughout the earth? Did it mean the same thing to the Anasazi as it did to the pre-Celtic people of ancient Ireland? As these questions swirl around my head like the line of the ancient symbol, I bear in mind two thoughts. First, I will never know the answer to questions
like these, and it is possible that nobody in the modern or future world will know. Secondly, it is wonderful that I will never know, and that these questions remain true mysteries for me. Mystery is the signal that we live in a universe that is greater and more exotic than our minds can contain.
It seems to me that when we are aware and curious about the world we live in, we continually balance between reaching and unfolding new knowledge on the one hand, and marveling at other realities beyond the reach of understanding on the other. This continual learning coupled with a continual wonder at mystery are the symptoms of a mind that is truly awake and alive, able to grow intellectually, and with the right attitude, able to grow spiritually as well. In the end, the reality we find ourselves inhabiting is a reality made of multiple dimensions, with meaning piled upon meaning, and with every surface a thin veil over a new and marvelous depth.
For a long time my paintings were abstractions. I find that abstraction puts me into a world of meditation, of exploring spiritual possibilities. This is a very nice place to be, but after a while I needed to bring more elements into my art. My interest was in making images that seduce and haunt the viewer, and which reward exploration with unfolding meaning that trails off into mystery. I wanted the experience I give the viewer of my paintings to be like my experience of Newgrange, where I explored legend and scientific study. For a long time my paintings were abstractions. I find that abstraction puts me into a world of meditation, of exploring spiritual possibilities. This is a very nice place to be, but after a while I needed to bring more elements into my art. My interest was in making images that seduce and haunt the viewer, and which reward exploration with unfolding meaning that trails off into mystery. I wanted the experience I give the viewer of my paintings to be like my experience of Newgrange, where I explored legend and scientific study. I wanted my viewer to find a place where knowledge trails off into never-answered questions about realities that are as certain as they are unseen. I am not finished until I have an image that creates an environment for the intellectual voyage of discovery and mystery.
Roberta Morgan
Text © 2008 Roberta Morgan, all rights reserved Images © 1985 Roberta Morgan, all rights reserved