Common everyday objects, scenes we overlook daily, are sometimes portals into a mystical experience. Artists, either by training or temperament, often are the first to notice what might be mistaken as something not worthy of attention. Yes, sometimes it looks like we’re wasting a lot of time! But alas, the ordinary can be not just amazing, but an opportunity to alter consciousness.
Have you ever been called by a quiet whisper to pay attention to something on the periphery of your attention?
I have recently become fascinated by barns. Not necessarily those classic, romantic barns, not the barns of nostalgia or greeting cards, but those large attempts at useful architecture in a landscape that vigorously opposes angularity and human endeavors. Barns in my environment are often the largest structures visible, still larger than some box stores. But invariably there will be a tree, or a grove, probably planted at about the same time the barn was first erected, that has outgrown the barn. And then there are the blackberry vines!
By spending an inordinate amount of time immersed in this arrangement I have come to discover that the fascination is consistent with a theme in my work, which is a completely subjective study of the combinations of domestic and the wild, cultivation and entropy, my egoic life and the life that goes on behind my daylight thinking.
The exploration of the barns in their landscape seemed to require a new technique, something that referenced the documentation of photography, but not quite. Something that could hint at a basic uneasiness I felt. The barns beckoned me, but were not quite safe to approach. Here’s more:
You can see some of these paintings at the Two Moons Gallery in La Conner, Washington. For more information call 360 708 4787. Maggie Wilder @ Gallery Cygnus.