Lesbos

Lesbos (16" x 16") mixed media distressed painting on wood panel.

Lesbos - also referred to as Mytilini after the capital - is an Island in the Mediterranean Sea. The term “lesbian,” is derived from Lesbos, primarily because of its most famous historic resident, the Ancient Greek Poetess, Sappho whose lyric poems were written to women, as well as men. Here I’ve created another mixed media distressed painting in which text, images and artworks about Sappho, and/or Lesbos are buried under layers of paint, as are other references and inferences about lesbians and the island. Among these I've included an image of the island taken from the NASA Website as well as a photograph of the capital city taken from Wikipedia.*

As usual the painting was made with many layers of paint, varnish, glue, wax, torn paper and my photographs taken of the artwork during various phases of production. The glitter stripes were made from photographs of glitter pulled from the digital morgue of my own pictures, and were enhanced with glitter glue.

I like to play with the random amorphous quality of the layered distressed paint and torn paper technique versus the crisp measured linear geometric (almost) perfect qualities I can create with camera and computer, masks, stencils metal rulers, tape, and X-acto knifes. Because of the way I work the paintings also reflect the ordered versus random nature of the universe in which I/we all exist.



*Those images not my own are in the public domain.