Sunday, May 15, 2011

Canthus Vitae

For my Final in Narrative Image, I decided to create a triptych on the themes of Life, Death, and Rebirth. For each panel, I wrote a piece of prose. This is all LOADED with symbolism, and I don't even want to begin to deliver a dissertation on it here. I figure these sorts of images are more enjoyable for people when they can come to their own conclusions about the symbolism and narrative, anyhow :)
Enjoy!



Canthus Vitae
watercolor paintings mounted on foamcore
Valerie Herron 2011





Panel One: Life
watercolor on Arches
Valerie Herron 2011

The magic of the incomprehensible microbe
Blood and teeth and fur and scales
Feathers venom bones and filth
We all come into this world swinging
Swaddled in the sling of physics
we dance in that all-night party of the pulse
and traverse the sinewy synoptic pathways
by cognitive torchlight
the spark that ignites the shaman in the ape
we create things bigger than ourselves
we are the ephemeral creating permanence.



  Panel Two: Death
watercolor on Arches
Valerie Herron 2011

the severing Shears of Atropos,

Shears of Skuld.

What will become of me?

Will I glide into the fold of oblivion

Or will I rocket

From zero to infinity?

Is there gestalt if my parts dissolve?

And can there be purpose

For those so soluble?

You, Great Annihilator:

The Hands Behind the cogs of the Universe

Above me and below me

Inside me and Around me,

From the terrestrial womb we emerge

And into the Earth we all return.





 Panel Three: Rebirth

watercolor on Arches
Valerie Herron 2011
 
We scatter and collide!
We are the earth
We are the sky.
You hear this, entropy?
We can only break
Into so many pieces
to be absorbed
expressed in chlorophyll and granite!
to nourish the larval souls
that only our imaginations will know.
Perhaps.
but we are not unknown to them,
we create things bigger than ourselves
we are the ephemeral creating permanence.