Revisiting Childhood Part Three

Revisiting Childhood --Part Three

-Mind of Science, Eye of God (2000)

As I have been exploring the works of contemporary artists who have mined the riches of their childhood memories to discover the influences these remembrances have upon their current creations I must mention the encaustic paintings of Chicago Artist Dan Addington. His “Heroes & Villains I and II” in oil paint, tar, and encaustic wax on panel is also collaged with comic book pages. The artist explains his powerfully graphic, moving, sensual, and tactile paintings thus:

“They are scenes from a mythology of heroes peculiar to Mid-Twentieth Century American boyhood, learned monthly, an issue at a time. Stories to be studied, page-by-page. Scenes to be played out in backyards and on garage rooftops. Volumes of rare apocrypha offer up old secrets and hidden truths. Illuminated manuscripts of venerated pulp texts lie scattered about the floor and bed. Inspired narratives of action, adventure and justice swell up and swirl about while sacred hymns of gunfighter ballads pour from the speakers of a tiny Sears & Roebuck turntable. When, as a child, I first found and read the old illustrated pulp westerns and adventure books that my dad had bought and read when he was young, it was the first time I truly understood that he was once so much like me – that through time and memory we shared the same mythology. The thin cord between our generations was pulled tight.”

In Dan Addington’s paintings, figures are dark, mysterious, bold and heroic in gesture, as well they might be, considering the subject matter and emotional resonance they must have had for the artist as a child. He is clearly exploring some deep psychological territory that makes use of abundant symbols of heroism and struggles for power that our culture has to offer. In addition, they suggest a meditative exploration of twilight moods mingled with something else. The large angelic figures in other works are equally metaphysical, and mysterious. Addington has acquired a style and media that work well together with his subject matter of memory and dream.

This mix of media and collaged materials got me thinking about the possibilities of alternative ways of painting, inspiring me to do a bit of experimenting myself.

Lets see if I can manage to post some of Dan Addington’s inspiring images…otherwise...Looking into his website one finds clues to the meanings of some powerful paintings:

http://danaddington.com/art/index.html

Revisiting Childhood Part Two

C. Dawn Davis
Portrait of a Young Saltimbanque
oil on panel
36 x 26 inches

C. Dawn Davis

Garden of Grace

oil on panel

16 x 16 inches

Zoe Starr & the Princess Pups
oil on canvas
28 x 28 inches

C. Dawn Davis

Harlequin Baby

oil on panel

14 x 11 inches

Further Revisits to Childhood

“ To be an artist is to never fully relinquish childhood.” – Pablo Picasso

Following-up on my previous blog about the experience of childhood artmaking and how it informs artists’ present art, I want to mention three other artists whose remembrances of childhood have influenced their work. Their creative output can be seen in on-line galleries, and in some cases at Atlanta-Area gallery spaces.

The painter, C. Dawn Davis who currently has work at the Matre Gallery in Atlanta, (http://www.matregallery.com/davis/paintings/) frequently represents child-like figures in her oil paintings. These personages appear in unusual costumes and theatrical settings. Ms. Davis has written of the persistence of childhood memory as it reappears in her work:

“If you are someone who can read another language well enough, then you know the feeling of understanding in head and heart of what is being said, but find it impossible to give another the exact translation. You are thinking in the other language. So it is with my paintings. The same elements reappear – figures posed in costumes and masks accompanied by birds or monkeys in spaces undefined except by color and geometry. I do realize…that these ideas are grounded in remembered reality. As a child, I saw an organ grinder and his monkey and have been haunted for years by the sadness of his wizened little face and the way he looked at me when I gave him my dime. I don’t always know what I’m trying to say when I start a painting and many times the outcome is just as mysterious to me as it may be to the viewer. Our childhood memories follow us wherever we go. They collect themselves and are presented again and again whether or not we are fluent in their language.”

Perusing Ms. Davis’ website evidences a continued interest in images that well up from the past: http://www.cdawndavis.com/. Here, then, are a few examples of her work:

Let me introduce two other artists whose work is similarly evocative and worth viewing as a stimulus to examining one’s own memories of childhood. Possibly such recollections will initiate an analysis of how such memories can infuse one’s artistic life. I recommend a little research into their work for anyone who wishes to plumb the depths of a seemingly inexhaustible spring of creative inspiration…memories of childhood.

Working often in oil on a large scale, Mark Dylan Hyde paints images that are surreal in their dreamlike juxtaposition of unusual combinations of objects. “Relics of a Rainy Afternoon,” (2001) is a visual visit to a remembered attic of antiquated bits and pieces, the sticky memories that remain attached to an adult artist. Mr. Hyde wrote quite eloquently of childhood memory as it informs and influences his art:

“We can never revisit childhood, not in the sense of a returning to or a recreation of one’s past. We can return to childhood only in memory, and our ability to remember childhood, although a wonderful gift, is also an elusive one. We watch our children and try to remember our own lives. Our most precious possessions are those things, like photographs and portraits, which facilitate lucid memory. We know there can be no turning back the clocks. Inherent in memory is a strong sense of nostalgia, a longing for that which has been lost, for that which is irretrievable. To remember the past is to gaze through a window blurred with leftover rain or obscured by sunlight. We are left with fragments of sensation, with half-glimpses and veiled intimations. These paintings are meditations on memory. They attempt to capture the intangible half-glimpses of memory and hold them still. It is small and commonplace, the quiet and empty, illuminated for an instance, imbued with mystery by an ebbing afternoon light, that triggers memory. I work with the residues of memory; with long-forgotten photographs, keepsakes that weren’t kept, tattered pages from a diary that went unwritten, the relics of memory. The memories of childhood are temporal; tidal pools of stranded impressions, water held in a cupped hand. They can become a haunting presence in the painter or poet. The ghost of one’s childhood dwells within the soul of the artist. We could not relinquish it even if we wanted to. It is always there. It is an anachronistic appendage that was never fully shed, and whether consciously, or unconsciously, it suffuses in us an inviolate sense of wonder, essential to all creativity. But we cannot go to it. It must come to us. The memories of childhood are whispers, the voices of ghosts. It is the whispering of these ghosts of childhood that evokes memory and informs these paintings.”

Hyde’s website is worth a view to see examples of the art he alludes to in his statement:

http://www.markdylanhyde.com/ T h e G r e e n C r o w S t u d i o

Art-making in Childhood As a Form of Human Connection.

I witness students in my elementary art classes who are new to the school and who are often new to this country, arriving with little language proficiency, but who use their artwork to demonstrate to their peers that they have capabilities and talent, value and intelligence. The generous spirit of the other students who recognize a new student’s efforts and reach out to their new classmate moves me. Just this week, an immigrant child from China won the admiration of her peers by rapidly and proficiently completing a drawing of a lion, our school mascot. Everyone was making a portrait of a lion for the Art Tile Fundraiser for our new Fieldhouse. As this particular student entered and demonstrated her skills, she made new connections to her classmates, possibly building new friendships through the use of a visual language. This is a quality of art production that has strong and lasting social implications for a person in a strange new environment. Here is a story of just such an individual who, now as an adult is reminded of such an experience.

Childhood Revisited.

In the Fall of 2002, I saw an art show at the Aliya Gallery which was a nine-artist group exhibition titled “Childhood Revisited.” The curator described the premise of the show as:

“Childhood is something that we all share, for better or worse. The experiences of childhood can define who we will be as adults. I have invited this group of nine artists to reconsider their early formative experiences and create works of art that reflect their memories of this time. This exhibition promises to be a rare glimpse into the minds of visual artists.”

I found much of the work engaging and I was particularly enlightened by the text that accompanied the artwork, which the individual artists wrote to explain their creations. The written passages added an extra dimension to the work, describing the memories that motivated the imagery, whether distinct and graphic memories, or of an overall mood of the artist’s childhood.

The work of one artist I found especially emotion and thought provoking, that of the Vietnamese born Duy Huynh (pronounced yee wun). In his painting “Chalkboard Child,” he painted himself as a child on a chalkboard green canvas with many repetitions of scrawled chalk-like lettering, “I will not draw in class, I will not draw in class.” There we witnessed a situation depicted where Duy’s incessant drawing may have been a refugee boy’s way of coping with the strange newness of an adopted land and it’s educational institutions. As the artist wrote:

“I received my first art commission in the third grade – an eight and a half by eleven inch pencil drawing of The Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles. I was paid two dollars and chocolate milk for a week. It was around this time that I started drawing, and consequently began building friendships with some classmates who would normally not acknowledge me before. For a nine-year-old refugee from Vietnam who spoke very little English, this was monumental. I soon realized that I could use art as a means of dealing with the overwhelming sense of displacement experienced throughout my childhood.”

You may view this painting by clicking on the thumbnail image found on the artist's website amongst images on his fifth gallery page titled, "Origamic Dream" http://www.duyhuynh.com/

Another one of this artist’s work was equally wrenching and powerfully graphic, depicting an environment of destruction and loss. The painting is of two individuals climbing into a tree as floodwaters rise – “The Flood.” Duy Huynh’s paintings have been described as poetic and contemplative, which symbolically reflect geographical and cultural displacement. I would refer you to his recent work at the Matre Gallery, on Bennett Street in Atlanta, GA: http://www.matregallery.com/huynh/, and to his own website: http://www.duyhuynh.com/ to see examples of his paintings. I am including several images below…and here you can see some persistent themes of motion and emotion in figures that portray the triumph of the human spirit as journeys are undertaken and destinations are reached.

Art experiences help to heal a lonely or fearful child.

The artwork was one way I also found my place in an elementary school community when I moved to a new township in Ohio as an eight-year-old child. I was shy and uncertain and unsure of how to make friends. However, I drew constantly and soon had my classmates asking me to make funny drawings of people. My caricatures often included word=play as well, such as “Jimmy Vanetti all covered with spaghetti.” A decade ago, I rediscovered many of these drawings when I cleared out my parents’ house after their deaths and the sale of the family home. I can relate to the profound and lasting experiences of making art as a child that were so seminal to Duy Huynh's development as an artist. The act of communicating through one’s art can help an unsettled child find a sense of belonging, a human connection in a new environment…a source of solace. I believe childhood memories can be a rich source of imagery, worth revisiting for any artist.

Here are links to some of Duy Huynh's paintings:

http://www.matregallery.com/huynh/single-gallery/4261822 "Crane Wife"

http://www.matregallery.com/huynh/single-gallery/1424124 "Embarkment"

http://www.matregallery.com/huynh/single-gallery/3849705 "All Is Transient"