Art
In my curio "collection," I included a specimen of my creativity or a sacrifice of my own muse. Loie has three brass nails holding her to the page in a crucifixion layout. Giving up the muse caused me great anxiety. In thinking about how to proceed into the future of my own artwork, I thought about conservation and mending repairs. Inspired by Kintsugi (Japanese for golden repair), an art of fixing broken pottery with a mixture of lacquer and powered gold. The breakage and repair becomes a beautiful and honored part of the history of an object rather than something to disguise. Not at all like grief avoidance or “living with the shadows of grief,” the ability to recognize a loss and then through a process, repair it into something new. After the rest of the images were complete I returned to this image and repaired what I felt might be broken by adding gold leaf to the image. For conservators, mending is an art.
Mixed Media Collage printed on Hahnemuhle's William Turner paper and mounted to wood canvas. Gold Leaf applied to the face. Shipping included in price.