“Goldmund knew a spot along the river where the
water was not deep; it’s bed was covered with shards and all kinds
of rubbish that fisherman had thrown there. . .From this spot, one could
look through the streaming, crystal-threaded water and see the dark,
vague bottom, see a vague golden glitter here and there, an enticing
sparkle, bits of a broken plate perhaps or a worn out sickle . . . or
it might be a mud fish . . .turning around down there, a ray of light
catching for an instant the bright fins of its scales and belly - one
could never make out what precisely was there, but there were always
enchantingly beautiful, enticing brief vague glints of drowned golden
treasure in the wet black ground. All true mysteries, it seemed to him,
were just like this mysterious water; all true images of the soul were
like this: they had no precise contour or shape: they only could be
guessed at, a beautiful distant possibility that was veiled in many
meanings. Just as something inexpressibly golden or silvery blinked
for a quivering instant in the twilight of the green river depths, an
illusion that contained, nevertheless, the most blissful promise . .
. In the same way the lantern hung under a cart at night painting giant
spinning shadows of wheel spokes on walls, could for a moment create
a shadow play that seemed as the work of Homer. And one’s nightly
dream were woven of the same unreal, magic stuff, a nothing that contained
all the images in the world, an ocean in whose crystal the forms of
all human beings, animals, and demons lived as ever ready possibilities.
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I think of these as folkloric; legends, myths, personifications of nature forms, and suddenly I see them closer to Chagall, Kandinsky, Klee and Soutine, where the eye is invited in to explore without naming anything, but at the same time being aware of ancient protocol and the command of the natural world through magic. |
- Andrew
Forge, art critic, author, on the paintings of Jason Travers |
The results of my creative process have often been identified
as folkloric; not in the sense of retelling grand tales of the past, but
in creating new legends yet to be told. Indeed, they are narrative passages, embracing a stage of illusory space that slips and turns, just as the cast of characters and their relationships. I use the word characters not only to identify the biomorphic representation within the paintings, but also to explain the presence of life that vibrates in even the structural forms and stray marks. As these forms begin to develop personality and interact, the story unfolds. My role, thus, becomes that of mediator, and even spectator to the events. |
-Jason Travers |