Swans
March 3, 2009
the gourd (oil on paper, 2002)
Every autumn for as long as I can remember, my mother would take us to a local pumpkin patch to find decapitated heads for our Jack o’ Lanterning. We’d wander the hay bale maze, pet the farm animals and naturally, hand select the most original gourds we could find.
This would almost always lead to several long-necked selections, with twisty tendrils suggesting beaks. We would take them home and affix a pair of googly eyes to each, giving a new sense of life, curiosity and personality. These creatures would gaze up on Halloween and bring smiles to our faces all the way through Thanksgiving. The ugly ducklings were swans to us.
This piece is a still life of one long-since-hollowed gourd, depicted largely in shadow and lying on its side. Absent here are the googly eyes. Gone are the playful expressions. Shadows could just as easily be bruises… rotten flesh… streaks of rain. The Halloween reveler has become the resting… the lifeless… lying in wait to be the zombie of another year.
But that, as always, is up for interpretation. Maybe I’m just out of my gourd…
