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Gauguin's Idol
Stone Riley
Subtitle: Green Man
Acrylic on canvas, 20 x 20 inches.
Here's my interpretation of one of the great Pagan visionary's self-portraits, one where a strange green idol stands forth from the darkness behind his head. I have collapsed the composition, so to speak, merging the two faces into one mask, guessing that he meant a viewer to imagine something more or less like this. The infinitely deep fluid eye imagined here is intended as an inlay of mother-of-pearl, a material Gauguin occasionally used. The surrounding here is intended to portray a certain profound light-in-darkness feeling which I believe was one of Gauguin’s fundamental intuitions. And I am saying here that he was right in a major philosophical point: Weirdness is not the same as evil, not in the least.
But I also took this chance to play upon another theme which I do not know if Gauguin meant. How deeply did this man commune with deities?
In that painting of himself he wears a cautious questioning look about the eyes and an enigmatic smile. (One impression might be that he's asking if we understand the picture.) On the other hand, the idol looks serene, inwardly involved and supremely confident. So is this a mere device to show us two sides of himself? Or, going further, is he remembering moments when a spirit comes and stands beside the artist at his labor?
Or else, I wonder, he may be thinking of the times you loose your grip upon this world to let some mighty being come and take hold of your limbs and speak words through your mouth and see here with your eyes. Did he dare that much?
In any case, this is equally a portrait of the ancient West European god of infinite green life.
Want to read more? www.stoneriley.com/TOMW.html
Or the home website: www.stoneriley.com
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