Museum of Unnatural History emerges from the traditions of the cabinet of curiosities, from the Renaissance to the modern era, and continues today in natural history museums. The historic impulse to collect and display elements of the natural world, as if they were religious relics, was originally a scientific endeavor. The genre of illustrating such objects was common when art and science were seen as branches of the same enterprise, both disciplines advancing human knowledge of the natural world. The inclusion of man-made artifacts, examples of art and engineering, locate human creativity in this natural order. Modern manifestations of such cabinets include the collections of Sigmund Freud and André Breton, the founder of Surrealism, adding a psychic, dreamlike, and irrational component to this tradition. Through these cabinets, nature is domesticated and the collector can travel the world through their collections without leaving their study, even worlds that do not or cannot exist.
In my painting I expand on this rich tradition. The objects depicted can be read as a text, revealing the transitory story of nature; life and death cycles, growth and decay (or decay arrested and preserved). The painting can also be read as a surreal poem, psychic and symbolic, representing nature as metaphor for the creative act. I combine creatures, real and improbable, that stare at the viewer from beyond death (even through the glass eyes of the taxidermist). We feel their gaze through artificial eyes of paint. Dead nature comes to life.
This painting was painted en plein air, in a meadow surrounded by spruce trees, the only observed natural objects to appear in the work. The hybrid nature of the beast in the fairy tale is expressed by his transformation into something half-human and half-animal. My beast is more inspired by a jellyfish or an alien than the furry, fanged beast of Jean Cocteau’s movie. Beauty is more plant than animal; a seedpod head sprouts from her neck and her blouse is covered in grass, or fur. They confront each other on the lap of some giant nature god, carved from moss-covered stone, emerging from the earth.
Light is the other protagonist in this work. Its temporal, transitory nature is like the flash of consciousness. The beast holds what looks like a match, rather than a candle, destined to burn fast and bright, illuminating his love for an instant. The other light, the reflected light of the moon, is on a slower course (is it rising or setting?). The moon illuminates the temple interior through the crack in the door. Darkness is dispelled for the moment, but it will return.
Staring at the reflective surface of the ocean, we know that it hides a multitude of mysteries in its unseen depths. The ocean can also be seen and felt as a metaphor for our unconscious, whose mysteries are typically only known when they surface. The diver in this painting is a psychic explorer, who can only dimly view this murky region through the portal of a protective suit, with the help of the lantern, which only illuminates what it focuses on. The viewer sees all at once what the diver can only discover one object at a time.
This undersea region is all in flux; fish swarm like sperm, tentacles wiggle, and all flows with the current. The slower-moving diver is anchored to the sea floor by weighted boots but effervescent breath bubbles to the surface, mimicking the bubbling sea life. Who is this creature caught in the blinding light of the lantern? Was it woken from a dream? Or is it the diver that will awake from a dream and this undersea angel will fade into the morning light, destined to remain a mystery—briefly illuminated, almost grasped.