Relativity

Learning to work with more than one dimension is interesting as I explore color and relationship with shapes and words. This series was for an Oriental Swap and the field was wide open. I decided to use packaging from dry-good products and instead of cutting off lids and working around edges, I'd cut out cards (2.5 x 3.5) incorporating folds and edges.

Because I'm a relative newcomer to artist trading cards and creating visual art, I feel very free to play and make mistakes. My cards aren't professional in any sense of the word, and it is a forgiving world, that of being an amateur.

I'm aware more and more of the dualities our culture poses, pitting success against failure, right against left, cat lovers against dog lovers, meat-eaters against vegetarians. There is an old saying that nature abhors straight lines; well, I think most of us fall in between the false extremes too often posed or given to us as choices. I don't have to pick one and forsake other interests, deny myself the pleasures of witnessing childhood because I don't have children, or hold a solid certainty about any particular issue.

Keats talked about negative capability as essential for a poet. To be able to hold within the mind two opposing thoughts and not become immobilized. More on this another time, but it is a statement that has guided me.