Weathervane 8

I find myself thinking, of my uncle that I barely knew.  I don't know why one would start missing someone you didn't know very well, many years after their death.  Attempting to describe or explain these inner glimpses in a practical way dissolves the initial emotion.  Like a vivid dream making one hundred percent sense, until  retelling it renders it absurd, unnecessary and impossible. Impossible to translate into understandable sentences with logical connections between the consecutive words.  A world where the person you're speaking to now, changes to someone completely different and unrelated in an instant.

The text I often incorporate in my artworks indicate thoughts and interpretations, the presence of cognitive activity, when I don’t have to think about what my hands are busy with.  A kind of meditation, unrelated to the practical thinking about the task at hand. Conceptual input into the art-making, when the medium and process is under control.  The making becomes automatic and the mind is free to roam a personal history.   It doesn't necessarily have to be readable, just recognisable as writing.  Asemic writing, abstract and alluding to knowledge transferred.  Disappointing to a viewer who painstakingly deciphers the texture just to find the artist asks more questions than offer answers.   When working on these art-works, I attempt to capture flow of consciousness, grasping as many fleeting thoughts as possible, to create a texture of text.

I know this uncle of mine had a publishing company called Hond.  Although I can count on one hand my conversations with him, forcing my memories is where the line between fact and fiction becomes blurry.  This is where I think my interpretation of why and what, detracts from and becomes secondary to the magic experienced when I hear this uncle's voice, ten years after he passed away.  I didn't know him that well and most of what I know of him is stories my mom told me, almost mythical in it's sparseness and speculation.