A few thoughts about The Witness from John's illustration blog:
The idea for this painting came from roughly the same area that inspired, “The Visitor,” a small waterway flowing through a local forest preserve.
Surrounded by old industry and new subdivisions, the preserve is now a protected nature area, but if you look past the greenery there are all kinds of connections to a more mercenary past. There are still piles of gravel here and there, reminders of the limestone quarry that decades ago supplied the growing cities around the country with large slabs of stone which were transported to their destinations via the nearby canal. Tall old pine trees grow in neat rows, near a decaying limestone building, reminders of a former nursery. An old rail spur borders the property, the abandoned tracks popping up through the underbrush from time to time, yet another reminder of a commercial past. The entire locale has that distinctly Midwestern aura of sinewy, bare knuckles, no nonsense types, scrabbling hard to make a buck in a turn of the century industrial world and gives off a weird, almost gothic, vibe. It’s a beautiful, quiet place now, but it’s not hard to imagine a thousand stories of a loud, grimy, checkered past, barely concealed beneath the placid surface.
Walking along the creek, starring down into the muddy water, I thought about representing the idea that there were all kinds of stories waiting to be exhumed, the evidence of their existence hiding in plain sight. I thought about painting an object that could be act as a repository of past experiences and that’s when the idea of a long lost doll came to me.
She’s a stand in of sorts for the people who used to live and work here all those years ago. The kind of object that had been handed down from generation to generation, a silent onlooker, an inanimate member of the family that had been embraced, loved, and confided in, a keeper of secrets and desires. Outgrown and set aside, lost, or abandoned, the old doll is a receptacle for an accumulation of times both good and bad, a silent witness, a mute observer of the past.
The idea for this painting came from roughly the same area that inspired, “The Visitor,” a small waterway flowing through a local forest preserve.
Surrounded by old industry and new subdivisions, the preserve is now a protected nature area, but if you look past the greenery there are all kinds of connections to a more mercenary past. There are still piles of gravel here and there, reminders of the limestone quarry that decades ago supplied the growing cities around the country with large slabs of stone which were transported to their destinations via the nearby canal. Tall old pine trees grow in neat rows, near a decaying limestone building, reminders of a former nursery. An old rail spur borders the property, the abandoned tracks popping up through the underbrush from time to time, yet another reminder of a commercial past. The entire locale has that distinctly Midwestern aura of sinewy, bare knuckles, no nonsense types, scrabbling hard to make a buck in a turn of the century industrial world and gives off a weird, almost gothic, vibe. It’s a beautiful, quiet place now, but it’s not hard to imagine a thousand stories of a loud, grimy, checkered past, barely concealed beneath the placid surface.
Walking along the creek, starring down into the muddy water, I thought about representing the idea that there were all kinds of stories waiting to be exhumed, the evidence of their existence hiding in plain sight. I thought about painting an object that could be act as a repository of past experiences and that’s when the idea of a long lost doll came to me.
She’s a stand in of sorts for the people who used to live and work here all those years ago. The kind of object that had been handed down from generation to generation, a silent onlooker, an inanimate member of the family that had been embraced, loved, and confided in, a keeper of secrets and desires. Outgrown and set aside, lost, or abandoned, the old doll is a receptacle for an accumulation of times both good and bad, a silent witness, a mute observer of the past.
© 2009 Walker Brush Works