remembrance dutyI made this piece for the Northeast public art initiative reacting to their prompt, ‘community’. Given a centre-focus this way meant this piece was to communicate my complex, even difficult ideas on the subject effectively. Firstly, there are the obvious welts and worn texture of the painting, as well as the faded, lightly blue colours slowly realizing into vibrant greens as you go right; this, as the desaturated silhouettes of overseas family gradually render into the people I know. Indeed, the process for this piece was an arduous layering of pencil crayon and acrylic washes. The birds are Arctic terns, famous for the record length of their migratory route, and so symbolize the immigrant aspect of my perspective. The birds’ movement from left to right represents not their progress but their passage into the future, into the earthly colours of the present and the land my family now lives on, the community possible because of it. |