I was inspired to paint pigs from reading about a character's nightmare in an Alberto Moravia novel. The image of these horrific snouts reminded me of a two-headed pig I had recently made out of clay. The clay pig and the paintings arose from some mysterious place in my unconscious, like images in a dream. As I began the paintings, I became curious about their meanings for me. My own associations ranged from food, (physical and spiritual), and greed to mystery, religious ritual, and ceremony as I knew that pigs were often sacrificed in places like ancient Greece. I found out that the pig was one of Demeter's sacred animals; as part of the Eleusian mysteries, small pigs were purified and sacrificed. These secret ceremonies were associated with the idea of the immortality of the soul and redemption. It turned out that my two-headed pig was a relative of an ancient Chinese two-headed boar, Peng-Feng. The pig symbolizes fertility, generosity and abundance to the Chinese. On the Buddhist wheel of life, the pig can mean greed, ignorance and delusion. On the doors of Shinto temples, the pig symbolizes courage. And the pig is deemed unfit to be eaten by Jews following a Kosher diet. (I painted my pigs from the point of view of a vegetarian former bacon/sausage/prociuto eater.) I have been painting in diptych format since painting my "Couples" series; the pigs lent themselves to this format as a way to express the duality of the physical/spiritual. I also find the diptych to provide an interesting challenge to composition; it reminds the viewer of the edges of the canvas. The pig served as a starting off point for me, a way to jump into a blank canvas armed with more than a paintbrush. However, the more I painted my pigs, the more obsessed I became with their "pigness" and my own "pigness". The food metaphor ultimately extended to paint itself and the creative process as a constant source of food for me, and the finished product, I hope, a source of food to be consumed, digested and remembered by the viewer... |
| PIGS A solo exhibition of oil paintings Arlene Grocery, New York, NY Sept. 4 - Oct. 30, 2002 |
 |
| Memory |