In Marfa Texas during the El Cosmico Trans-Peco Music Festival, I picked up a beautiful book and while flipping through it, my heart skipped when I saw the colors, divided circles & rainbow prism beams of Hilma af Klint. I felt a direct connection to some of the themes I had been exploring in my own work and also to the Tantric paintings of India of which I’d long been an admirer. All encompassing the idea of reducing images, shapes & colors to symbolize energy, both in motion and stillness, seen and unseen.
I am so honored that the Guggenheim store has selected a collection of my work to be available during the exhibit Hilma af Klint; Painting for the Future. They have chosen styles to inspire ceremony & ritual while focusing on imagery that has a common thread to Hilma af Klint’s work. For the exhibit I have also created an exclusive paint option, ‘Ode to Hilma’, by taking my ‘rainbow’ and channeling it into a prism similar to the one in Altarpiece (nr 1, Group 10, 1907) that merges up to two opposing matte black & white glazed circles representing duality.
Equally exciting for me (!!!) is the opportunity to create an installation in the window of the Guggenheim store in which painted rocks are stacked in Cairns atop a beautiful 'Reclaimed Heart Pine' floor, generously supplied from Jamie from The Hudson Company. The backdrop is a curtain of black & white stoneware discs, reminiscent of Hilma's 1920 painting- Buddha's Standpoint in the Earthly Life.
Iris Muller-Westermann- ’’The fundamental idea…was to convey knowledge about the unity of all existence, which lies hidden behind the polarized, dual world in which we live.” This immediately reminded me of a quote from Robert Beer, “Like a wish-granting gem that refracts myriad rays of rainbow light, the nature of the light is one, although its aspects of illumination appear to be many.”
