Fissures of Wisdom

Fissures of Wisdom 1 (SOLD)
Fissures of Wisdom 2 (SOLD)
(2016)
Glazed stoneware, resin, gold, acylic
Unique
​H37 W27 D20cm (each)

The classic portrait - an elegant pose – a considered composition of angles and eye direction, reminiscent of Bernini’s  Baroque portrait of Costanza Bonarelli, 1636-38.
However, these ornamental portraits seek to consider a critical engagement with the viewer, confronting fundamental questions of the inner self.
Inspired by the ancient Japanese art of Kintsugi and a philosophy of seeing beauty in imperfection, they seek to question a tension between destruction and repair, fragility and resilience.
Half of each portrait has a transparency, a window to the inner self, inviting a deeper consideration. Paradoxically the ice like surface holds the image of its environment trapped within its mass, inverted and distorted creating a confusion of reality and the imagined, a state of ambivalence.
Together they repel and attract, they are the same but different, one perhaps a victim the other a perpetrator, both have a story to tell.