Alison Van Pelt Essay
#4 Jim Morphesis (Visiting Painting)
#5 Alison Van Pelt (Response Painting)
In this work I explored the idea of truth as it relates to the material world and other less tangible realms. The painting of the skull, to which I was responding, was fiery and dripping with color. It looked like it was laughing from the beyond at my attachment to this reality. My response was to paint a self-portrait. A doctor x-rayed my head and I worked from that image. The x-ray served as documentation of my underlying veracity, exactness, fact, (all synonyms for truth). While truth can be defined as the ideal or fundamental reality apart from and transcending perceived experience, the skull can be seen as the essential constant beneath the less permanent flesh; the authentic structure under the image presented of a persona.
Buddhists say the only constant is change. In this state of flux, is the fundamental reality spirit? In my predecessor's painting a light bulb is painted over the forehead; a symbolic illumination of the Ajna Chakra? Some kind of revelation? I placed a flower over the third eye, a symbol of truth and beauty. While a flower is ephemeral and fragile, relative to the substantial permanence of bones, here their roles are reversed. As I have painted it, the skull is translucent and ethereal, while the flowers, representing spirit, light, essence, are rendered as substantive and concrete. This reversal, suggesting an alternative perception of reality, perpetuates the question of absolute truth within an ever-changing existence.