Cantigas
The paintings and works on paper included here
were produced between 2000-2005. All were influenced by two concurrent things. First was the garden in my new house where I planted iris', hydrangeas, roses, tulips, dahlias, poppies etc. The second was my research into
Luís Vaz de Camões' Lusíadas for a hand-made book (included
here) titled
Cantigas (songs). The title is a play on the ten cantos of
Os Lusíadas. The book references stories found in Camões' epic poem including the legend of King Pedro I and Inês de Castro.
References in the paintings
References in the book, Cantigas
- page 4 (Cantiga II) is a a reference to an installation I saw in 1989 by Ilya Kabakov, The Man Who Flew Into Space From His Apartment. This installation was a part of the Magiciens de la Terre show at the Pompidou Center in Paris. In Ilya Kabakov and the Concentrated Spectacle of Soviet Power by Matthew Jackson (Berkeley 2001), Kabakov is quoted as saying, "When man announces, propounds the truth, all of that leads to deadliness, rigidity, dogmatism, immobility etc. And only untruthfulness allows us to form representations of the real truth, or at least search for it."
- page 5 (Cantiga II): see "Lesson Two"
- page 15 (Cantiga VII): LXXVIII
" ... But what blindness, what rash folly, Ye Nymphs of the Tagus and the Mondego, is this, that I should embark on an undertaking so arduous, so long, and so varied without your aid! I invoke your favour, for I am sailing now in the high sea with such a contrary wind that, should you help me not, I greatly fear my frail barque must founder." (Camõens, The Lusiads, translated by William C. Atkinson, p.176)
- page 20 (Cantiga X): Camões/Atkinson p.30.