These two started off as a tandem media and color study. I wasn’t entirely sure finished works would eventually come out of the effort. But I’m glad to have found otherwise. Happier still, by making this a diptych, I felt I was able to reference my good friend Sarah Adam who is an OG paired painting queen. And with whom I was glad to have as an exhibiting friend at the 2021 Friends show at Atlantic Works Gallery.
Courtesy of a private collector.
I wanted to work on some impasto clouds, experiment with a liquid gold paint and some thinning effects with solvent on hand. I had been eyeing the waterfall element for a long time, kept on trying to insert it into works, but since it didn’t look quite right as a participatory segment, I thought to have it as a foreground feature.
The complementary jewel tones of the hexagon entities are pleasing to me, yet there is something mildly unsettling to them- their implied gargantuan scale, erupting from an otherwise idyllic golden sky? The title of the pair here refers to the Greco-Roman hero twins Castor and Pollux, whom in time were set among the constellation Gemini. These were something of a follow up to a previous work of mine, where I remixed an old sisterwerk and thus made a motherwerk:
Leda, and Zeus, and Tyndareus: a historically functioning power throuple. But how did it all go? Leda bore the children of both divinity and humanity. Their children, these identical yet fraternal twins, through their combined efforts and actions the eternal and divine Polydeukes (Pollux) raises up his mortal brother Kastor (Castor) into eternal divinity, watching from the heavens together for all time as cthonic-celestial geminid guardians.
When work addresses legacy, depth, space, attraction and repulsion, I’m into that.