Sympathy
Conditions of Mutual Susceptibility
WORKS ON PAPERGRAPHITE & CHALK ON STONEHENGE
28" X 42"
As to What
“Sympathy” often connotes pity, the capacity to share the painful feelings of another. My interest lies in the definitions expressed in Webster’s 10th Collegiate’s first entry:
sympathy 1a: an affinity, association, or relationship between persons or things wherein whatever affects one similarly affects the other. b: mutual or parallel susceptibility or a condition brought about by it. c: unity or harmony in action or effect.
Beliefs that I hold drive these works. One is that consciousness forms everything. Old divisions of animate/inanimate are thrown out. Another is that things converge through a law of attraction. Conjuncted partners may look odd or ill-fit to the observer, their pertinent affinities not apparent at the surface, yet existing powerfully at the level of their essence. In close proximity, these things work on one another, influencing the others’ make up and identity, trading atoms, joining their stories in the creation of entirely new ones. Their influence proceeds in the form of yearnings, comfortings, clashings, meldings of all kinds. The parasites in a fruit become its familiars. A ladder ascends into and joins a dimension-busting celestial event. Draped entities share a narrative of crying. Hopeful globes float through the frame of a crude window, headed toward us.
As to How
I arrived at the imagery by paying close attention to my emotions. Each picture’s emotional tone is unique. Intuitive photo shoots formed the bulk of my source material,
with additional elements garnered from B&W New Yorker photos and the drapery work of Caravaggio and van der Weyden.
I started working the page with graphite, drawing known imagery and rubbing in value changes. Rubbing predominated, a sympathetic event between me, the paper, and the imagery. Through it, shapes showed up, and I let them determine boundaries, surfaces, and elements that I had not predicted. Later came the listening for where to let color in. The conjunction of B&W with color reveals another belief I am immersed in: that
infinite realities coexist simultaneously, endlessly, fluidly. In the seduction of drawings, fluid realities appear to rest, letting us enter into sympathy with them at our leisure.
Janice Porter
November, 2006
