Friday 6 July 2012

Telling a story

I have been researching for weeks, not really certain of where I was going and I came across a word....mythopoetic (meaning the making of myths).
I have realized that one word can say everything.  For such a long time in this learning process I was reluctant to accept that 'big words' were completely necessary.  Of course they are.  There is always a word that means exactly what you are trying to say.....one word that covers a sentence of words, one word that becomes a beautiful image or notion of everything you believe holds meaning to you.  These words are works of art in themselves, that visually and verbally flow across paper.

There is a place in the story that interests me, where words and ideas can manifest visually.  It's the place between non-fiction and fiction.  I like to call it the grey area, it is however, the 'liminal space'.

Victor Turner wrote:
Liminal entities are neither here nor there; they are betwixt and between the positions assigned by law, custom, convention, and ceremonial...Thus liminality is frequently likened to death, to being in the womb, to invisibility, to darkness, to bisexuality, to the wilderness, and to an eclipse of the sun and the moon. (1969, p.95)

I am discovering this liminal space more and more within my own work.  It is an space where discoveries can be made.  It is the 'threshold' to the creative mind.  Art to me is neither totally fact or fantasy. I am creating something that has been interpreted by my own set of rules, ideas, experiences.....therefore the factual element that begins the process becomes compromised and the fantasy is the distortion that has been hatched out of the liminal space.  Turner describes this creative place well as "fructile chaos, a fertile nothingness, a storehouse of possibilities....a gestation process"


I guess it can also be subjective as to whether you feel the same way about things you see or hear...your comprehension of anything is always filtered through sets of lenses connected to your life and environmental experience, often subconsciously.
There are no rules.  Cultivate your creative space, enjoy fantasy, embrace the story.

Seraphine Pick's work as a wonderful example of this fact, fantasy distortion.  Enjoy.



Seraphine Pick 'High Rise'