Web of Life

I originally created this black papercut web image to center around a painting I had done about 20 years ago in pastels called Lonely Tree. (Try to imagine the image without the black web over it and that’s Lonely Tree.) I always loved the color and form of my Lonely Tree piece and can distinctly recall the time I spent creating it – undisturbed, intent, completely focused, confident, and solid. I framed it immediately and it has hung in various spots in my home for all of these years.

A few years ago, however, I started to notice it in a new way and became kind of uneasy about it, like it needed something more. The lone tree started to tug at me and it now seemed somewhat unnecessary and odd to be the only thing in the landscape.

So I took it down from the wall and brought it into my studio for a few months. I dragged it along to my paper cutting class in Penland, North Carolina  in the spring of 2008 to see if I got any inspiration there. The idea of the spider web around it evolved and the teacher gave me some tips on how I could lay it out. When I got back home, I tackled it, pulling together all sorts of symbols that I felt supported me in the web of my life.

This was a tedious cutting and, if held up away from the painting on which it is mounted, would hold together as it is all one piece of Tyvek paper. Whew! I cut three at once with the intention of resting one of them on top of the Lonely Tree painting and reserving two others to mount in different ways. Please see the other two images within this gallery to see how that mounting ended up.

The original measures roughly 30 x 24″ with border and still hangs in my house, not quite so lonely anymore. Prints of this original piece and a variety of products including t-shirts and ipad/iphone cases can be found at Redbubble.