work in progress

concept behind the "Art of lethe Series":

The series that I have been working on ever since the transition into allocating a significant amount of my time to art about a year ago occurred is called “The Art of Lethe”; and it is now apparent that that title and my identity as an artist have become permanently intertwined. Anyways, to distill the underlying story to its bare bones, the image series is meant to document a journey through the underworld that ends along the banks of Lethe, a river in the Greek version of the underworld that induces complete amnesia in spirits directly prior to their reincarnation. Thus, the point at which cupping a handful of water and consuming it with whatever emotion is specific to the personality involved happens has the station of being the absolute final act in a person’s passage through strata of diminishing corporeality and a headlong plunge into a new feature bereft of memory baggage.

It can naturally be assumed that, as a one gets closer and closer to the point at which identity will be forever erased, thoughts will become more and more drawn to the past and those surviving monoliths representing memories of significant moments, thereby generating for the traveler a landscape perceived through an emotional lens that serves to distort, beautify, or mar. In order to display the degrading quality of human memory and its ability to alter/distort, all of the structures denoting memories in the series are noticeably deteriorating. Moreover, it is a documented phenomenon in the neuroscience of memory consolidation and recall that the frequency of recollection has an inverse relationship with memory accuracy. That is, more and more false details get added and true details deleted whenever a memory gets dragged to the fore of consciousness, rendering the final form a near total simulacrum. I’m sure that many of you can relate relative to the unrealistic loveliness or horribleness (depends on the experience obviously) that memories of past relationships with a high level of emotional investment can acquire as the years go by. So, those pieces in the series with greater levels of decay apparent represent events or people in my past that I keep revisiting for whatever reason.

The actual character that is taking the underworld journey isn’t shown until “Future Disregard”, which is the final piece in the series where the act of drinking of Lethe is shown. Her name is Mordra (the female version of the Arthurian character called Mordred), and I will explain her significance and role in the series via a short story that will soon be posted on the blog. I promise that the language will be more concise and Hemingway-esque as opposed to my usual convoluted babble.  Anyways, thanks for reading and I hope that you enjoyed the art!

-Quinn

New Website

I just finished making a website that will hopefully provide a more official portal for art viewing. You can access it by clicking the link below. Thanks!

artoflethe.com

a piece entitled "future disregard" that I completed somewhat recently (18" by 15")

Selection of New Pieces (long overdue)

Some writing for a change of pace. More art will be posted once i get a better camera, for the images i've posted thus far have been embarrassingly poor quality.

The place, Huntington Gorge, being one of those locations you research as a result of the prospect of having fun, initially took on the air of innocence and escape, somewhere offering a much needed natural respite from the chaos of society. For the first few visits, times in which the murky water held our youthful bodies throughout all of their giddy motions, the gorge maintained this patina of untainted escapism, and not even the sign standing sentinel above it listing the number of people that had died alongside corresponding years of death served to dishearten.

It was during the third visit then that a faint sense of wrongness found it’s way into the warrens of the subconscious, tentatively testing the stale air for the scent of potential victims.  No awareness of the feeling’s source was present during the ride up, but you could detect its vibrations in the subsurface language of the group, in the way conversations and laughter felt weak and stillborn, like dead leaves floating through the radioactive air of Chernobyl. In retrospect, though no one directly acknowledged the difference in energy between the current undertaking and past trips, everyone was acutely aware of it, and only the fear of being alone in our convictions kept us cavorting about in feigned security.  So, as we turned onto the poorly maintained dirt road and started catching glimpses of deep pools lingering within the stream to our right, we continued to banter and make light.

It being somewhat late in the season as denoted by slight discoloration among some of the oaks and maples lining the banks, we had no issue finding parking near our usual spot, which was directly below that reaper’s record of a sign as it turns out. It seemed as if that slab of decaying wood was deliberately turned toward me as I exited the car, demanding my attention like a little kid desperately wanting to show off a new trick, and it took no mean amount of will power to direct thought and action toward the trail that my friends were already starting to advance down in single file.  One foot in front of the other and tear misgivings asunder, the mantra went.

                  The short decent to pools waiting in green solitude made me recall patterns in incidents of past trips that hadn’t struck as abnormal at the time but now fit only too well into waiting niches of my new outlook. That is, the amount of near falls experienced by the group as we descended were statistically deviant this time and, if memory serves, the times before. Every root and slick slab of shale offered purchase that would betray you with unapologetic impulsiveness, for the land had seemingly adopted a borderline personality disorder with whimsical delight. A change in the lighting also occurred that made the striated granite carved by the falls into edgeless pinnacles and channels wax as a secondary liquid entity, a river encasing the first one that moved infinitely slower. I suppose that this was the case scientifically, but thinking about it in poetic terms held way more appeal. In their zealous adherence to edicts of science, others in the group would disagree, their thoughts turning to more obvious instances of the same concept, such as the terrain formed by water ice interwoven with colder CO2 ice on the polar ice caps of Mars. 

                  Miraculously, no injuries were sustained, and there was almost a palpable sense of relief as we shed our clothes in preparation for indulgence in Neptune’s libation, his green, sediment filled, libation that some twenty plus recorded bodies had been hauled out of by stone faced EMTS courting professional distance and grief wracked loved ones incapable of any semblance of distance over the course of twenty years. Still, it was an abnormally hot day in the autumn of September, a time for nakedness, laughter, and fond memory formation.

stoker+portishead edit