In Remembrance

"The Sound of His Own Voice Made Him Cry the Most", collage on watercolor paper, Amanda Clyne, 2006

Detail -- sewn fragments of statutes, contracts, faxes and memos from my life as a lawyer.

This is an artwork I made when I was an art student, in remembrance of my experience of 9/11. Here is the artist statement I wrote about the piece:

To many people, the events of September 11 have come to represent the vulnerability of our security, the new threat and fear of terrorism, or the heartstring to pull to justify war. But on that day, I was a New Yorker living in lower Manhattan, working as a corporate lawyer, and for me, the two burning towers have come to represent the moment that became the catalyst for change in my life, for reassessing my priorities, and for searching for the passions and joys that were being sidelined by my ambitious career.

Sewing together fragments of the contracts, statutes, faxes and memos that consumed my daily life as a lawyer, I re-constructed the image of the two towers of the World Trade Center. I wanted the red thread to convey a sense of fragility, memory, and even the suturing of a wound. In contrast, I wanted the fallout of the explosion of the towers to be fragments of my own creation or of personal joys – my niece’s artwork, sheet music for my piano, photos of my best friend’s pregnant belly, generally images of my life outside the office full of art, love, family and beauty. And I wanted to rebuild the city with that joy, as indeed all New Yorkers did after the attacks.

The title of the piece comes from Jonathon Safran Foer’s novel “Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close”, in which the young protaganist who lost his father in the World Trade Center attacks struggles to answer the question, “Can any good come from this?”. I hope my piece reflects my answer – for me and the city I love.

An Interesting Life

An interesting life makes for an interesting artist. A more in-depth biography of my life so far, recently posted to my website:

"Being an artist was not my first choice. Frankly, I never knew it could be a choice at all. To me, artists were magical beings, fearless and gifted, born with gargantuan imaginations akin to the power of superheroes. Art seemed too important, too precious for me to violate with my amateur ideas and crude skills. Art was for looking, for admiring, for experiencing. For me, that would have to be enough.

So although I knew early on that I was not going to be an artist, I was determined that my life be anything but boring. As the drama and adventures began to unfold, I came to see my life as a series of starring roles in a string of Hollywood films. Here are just a few of my storylines:

• Young teenage girl sexually assaulted by gang of teenage boys, fights for their conviction. Eventually graduates from university with a degree in Women’s Studies, and goes on to pursue law school.College girl backpacks through Europe for the summer, meets a tall, dark stranger and moves to the south of France for her first great love affair.

• Young lawyer conquers Manhattan, negotiating billion dollar deals in the boardroom by day, dancing up a storm in the clubs by night. On her precious days off, she secretly trolls art galleries and museums, art books and magazines, wondering what if...

• Junior associate at New York law firm transferred to Singapore, works in India, travels throughout Asia, begins to see the world anew.

• Traumatized by 9/11, New Yorker quits her lucrative job and discovers she is an artist. Friends, family and colleagues are inexplicably and freakishly supportive.

I have studied at eight universities, earned three degrees, worked on three continents and lived in six different cities around the world. So far, my life has not been simple or straightforward, but now it is all fodder for my art.

Since graduating from OCAD University in 2009 with the medal in Drawing and Painting, I have been working in Toronto as a full-time artist. And I now know that artists are indeed not magical beings, but hard-working, obsessive, passionate mortals."

Over-Exposure

On my last day vacationing by the Ottawa river yesterday, I finished reading a book about Francis Bacon - interviews, commentaries - a lot of it setting out his biography and how it related to his work. After awhile, knowing all the sordid, twisted details of his life started to actually take away from his work for me, not add to its power. The author repeats over and over how carefully Bacon managed his image, but interestingly Bacon seemed more guarded about how he felt about art and his own work than he did about revealing his private (and not-so-private) demons. Considering I've started this blog, and am revealing almost daily my thoughts and feelings about my work and art in general, it's made me think about whether that sense of "mystery" that Bacon supposedly cultivated in his work really had anything to do with its success. While, as an artist, I'm fascinated with his process and his ideas, as a viewer, I think there can be just too much information. Obviously the viewing experience can be enriched by a deeper understanding of the historical and theoretical context of the work, but at the end of the day, it is a painting to be experienced visually. Isn't it? I hate to bring up Barthes again, but he touches on this idea when he writes of closing one's eyes to best see the photograph (or in my case, painting):

"Absolute subjectivity is achieved only in a state, an effort, of silence (shutting your eyes is to make the image speak in silence). The photograph touches me if I withdraw it from its usual blah-blah: "Technique,", "Reality," "Reportage," "Art,", etc.: to say nothing, to shut my eyes, to allow the detail to rise of its own accord into affective consciousness." (Camera Lucida, p.55)

Francis Bacon's paintings don't touch me because of my knowledge of his relationship with Peter Lacy, or of his reliance on the images of Muybridge and Velasquez, or of his alcoholic rampages. My relationship to his work may begin with sympathy, but a connection is made through empathy - the "I see how you feel", becomes an "I feel that too". I think viewers (and especially art historians) can go too far in trying to understand the ins and outs of the artist's perspective, when the artist's purpose is not to make a diaristic statement, but to evoke/provoke an experience in or connection with the viewer. Ambiguities and contradictions in the image keep the image alive and provide a forum to explore those aspects of our nature that lie buried within ourselves. I'm not sure what this means for this blog - but I certainly don't think you have to read it to experience my paintings. This is more about the journey than understanding any particular painting.

After I blogged the other day about moving to my dark side, I got an email from a friend who seemed a) surprised that I had a dark side, and b) perplexed that I would want to revel in that side to "suffer" for my art. While I think it is safe to say that I'm a half-full kind of girl, we certainly all have a dark side - traumas, insecurities, vulnerabilities. But it's not that I want to "suffer" for my art. Nor do I want my art to be a navel-gazing endeavor. I just think that art that taps into those unresolved or unsatisfied parts of ourselves connects with people in a more honest and meaningful way than art that is supported merely by interesting philosophical ideas. What I was trying to say, was that I want to be more fearless in my art. Art is a very revealing venture, whether you want it to be or not, and I think most often it is the bravest among us who create the best work.