Virginia Broersma Essay
#42 Mark Licari (Visiting Painting)
#43 Virginia Broersma (Response painting)
When I first received the painting from which I was to create my own version, I sat down and wrote out all the associations I made with what I was seeing. The things that came to mind were: opening, cracking, bursting, freedom, birth, breaking through the physical/material (symbolized by metals, gold, earth, a shell etc.) to the transcendental – the open night time sky, flickering with stars. I equated the illustration of this opening with the idea of an awakening, a breakthrough; progress through destruction; the necessary collapsing of what was to make room for what will be.
My work at the time had been focusing on the Portrait and its abstraction as my subject matter. The move from realism to abstraction allows for a less literal interpretation of the image, which for me was closer to my intentions with the work. With this particular painting, I wanted to convey the sense of an emotional or psychological breakthrough – the feeling of power, determination, anxiety, exhilaration and messiness when you are emotionally upended and the chaos and relief that comes from a major change.
As I began to work on my painting, my goal was to create a posture of strength with the face, while also reflecting the turbulence of the moment, which I accomplished with the brushwork that defines the face while it also obliterates it. Creating an image that felt powerful while containing fragility, reflecting certainty and uncertainty, and beauty without prettiness were polarities I wanted to indicate in the final painting. The paintings themselves – mine and the one that I worked from – look very different from each other and I wonder if people will get the connection? Their relationship makes obvious sense to me, but I think that is what makes the Circle of Truth project compelling. Truth is a difficult thing to pin down, especially in an artwork, and to ask artists to communicate the truth as they understand it, in the language they are most comfortable with, is exciting and provocative to me. What is obvious to one could be obscure to another. In making the painting, I let myself go with what made sense to me, without worrying about there being a quickly understood or obvious connection to the painting that came before me.
I found the process a satisfying exercise in spending meaningful time with another work of art – not just a quick look and fast assessment, but really sitting with it for some time. At this point, when I have yet to see all the paintings together, I am so curious to see what other’s came up with, and see if their truths circle back around to my truth in any way.