Upcycling/Reworking

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A phenomenon of getting older as an artist is the accumulation of works in one's studio. In going through this inventory, I came upon several paintings, which I felt  had not come out as I originally wished. At the same time I happened upon the term "kintsugi". Kintsugi (golden joinery) is a Japanese art form used to repair broken pottery by mending the area of breakage with lacquer dusted with powdered gold. As a philosophy, it treats breakage and repair as part of the history of an object, rather than something to disguise. 

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In looking at some of my older works, I decided to metaphorically apply this idea. The work was not satisfactory to me, but I was reluctant to discard it. I removed the canvases from their frames and cut out the sections that appealed to me, and then "re-joined" the pieces a new way with gold thread. Pictured in the gallery are 10 works created in this way. 

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I also reworked to three photographs from 2020 (Hahnemühle on aluminium), 80 x 65 cm. I covered the original photographs using the Japanese symbols for "wave" and "kintsugi" – freely interpreted by me as I do not aspire to become a calligrapher.