Secret Inside
We dance round in a ring and suppose, While the secret sits in the middle and knows.
-Robert Frost
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This is a new painting, in size about 11″ square on paper, that I will be showing at my next show that opens in a little over two weeks at the West End Gallery in Corning. I call this piece Secret Inside.
I really didn’t know what to think of this piece after I painted it. All of the elements fell into place strictly from a compositional standpoint, without a lot of rumination over meaning or intent. Theysimply worked in the context of the scene. It wasn’t until I had time to step back and study it for a bit that it started to reveal its meaning to me. Or at least what it means to me. You might see it differently.
I began to see the interior scene as the secret self, the part of us that we seldom expose to the outer world, which is seen out the window. The guitar represents our hidden self-expression and creativity. The painting on the wall (looks suspiciously like one of mine) represents the desire for beauty and the book on the table, the desire for knowledge. The empty bottle symbolizes our weaknesses, our vices. Perhaps the desire to forget.
The table shows what might be seen illuminated in a glimpse from the outside and the overall darkness of the interior reveals itself as that dark part of us that is never visible to the outer world. Or which we hope is never visible.
As I’ve said many times before here, this is only my personal take on this. You might see something completely different, perhaps something much less symbolic or you might see it as something darker, more sinister.
It all depends on your own secrets inside.
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