New Work: Psychedelic

Psychedelic 
Painted paper collage
16" x 20"

Quite a while ago I had cut out some shapes from solid colored paper. I had an idea but never followed up on it. The shapes sort of languished on my floor as I worked on monoprinting and making pieces from those prints. At the end of April, after my last piece, I began to wonder about those solid shapes. What could I do with them? I really missed what I perceive as the clarity of those solid colors. They give a different effect from the monoprinted shapes I think. I was nervous though about trying something different. I felt that my last several pieces were good-a step in the right direction. Should I deviate from that idea?

And then, just by accident, I happened across an image of a psilocybin molecule. Totally unrelated right? Sort of. As I started to investigate psilocybin, I came across other molecules. They all seemed to have these beautiful structures. You can see one here and here. I hope that I have a real appreciation for all sorts of beauty in all kinds of places and in all types of things. Images of molecules really speak to me somehow; their order and arrangement, not to mention how their atoms come together and break apart. (You can read more about molecules here.) I am not a chemistry person (I barely squeaked by in high school chemistry class) but I can appreciate these ideas on a general level.

So, I began to think about using these structures as a basis for making my pieces. They looked an awful lot like what I was trying to do already, which is to make some kind of sense and order out of all of these shapes. I had been moving towards a more formal arrangement of the shapes already but was a little stuck. Molecules and their inherent beauty are a good answer for me.

Psilocybin as you might know is the compound found in magic mushrooms. I don't have too much curiosity about the use of psychedelic drugs other than to know that the drugs have had many purposes throughout history and are used by different cultures around the world. I will settle for just admiring the beauty of their molecular structure!

And while my final piece doesn't follow the shape of the compound exactly, it works well for my purposes. I wanted a dominant area and then some subordinate areas. Linking everything together was challenging and I kept some areas separate from each other. Hopefully the piece is balanced. I will be trying the idea again soon and will make modifications. For now, I am happy with the initial efforts.