Artist and Muse
These works are examples from a series that explores my artist/muse relationship and the creative process.
In the first part of his Eighth Elegy in the Duino Elegies, Rainer Maria Rilke wrote:
We can only know
What is out there
From an animal’s features
For we make even infants
Turn and look back
At the way things are shaped
Not towards the open
That lies so deep
In an animal’s face
By portraying myself as dog-like and by depicting my Muse as The Family Dog, I illustrate my effort to know “the open” that Rilke describes in his poem. I also create sexually ambiguous personas for my Muse and for me in order to question traditional definitions of Artist/Muse interactions.
I use transfigurations in my work as a way to acknowledge that metamorphosis is inherent in the identity, process, and product of the artist. Transfiguration also exalts the experience of making art, challenges historical representations of the Artist and the Muse, and depicts the mutability of identity and inspiration.
In the first part of his Eighth Elegy in the Duino Elegies, Rainer Maria Rilke wrote:
We can only know
What is out there
From an animal’s features
For we make even infants
Turn and look back
At the way things are shaped
Not towards the open
That lies so deep
In an animal’s face
By portraying myself as dog-like and by depicting my Muse as The Family Dog, I illustrate my effort to know “the open” that Rilke describes in his poem. I also create sexually ambiguous personas for my Muse and for me in order to question traditional definitions of Artist/Muse interactions.
I use transfigurations in my work as a way to acknowledge that metamorphosis is inherent in the identity, process, and product of the artist. Transfiguration also exalts the experience of making art, challenges historical representations of the Artist and the Muse, and depicts the mutability of identity and inspiration.
