Recurring Themes

I have had an interesting insight recently into the way that much of the imagery in my art is inherent . One of the things that has been occupying much of my time and energy lately is cleaning and organizing SOME of the stuff here in what has been the family home since I was three weeks old. Add to this a creative mother from a depression era farm, a very inventive and handy father, and the emptying of about 4 houses owned by deceased relatives and you have quite and assortment of 'things.' There are piles and piles of papers here and it is not unusual to find things from the 60's, 40's, 80's (1880's or 1980's) all in the same pile. (Dad says this just shows that the pile has been turned every once in a while!) Some of the papers I have found are report cards and various school papers from the 6 of us 'kids'.

The other day I found a child's drawing that seemed especially familiar to me. When I turned it over and saw my name on the back the reason for the connection became obvious and yet it seemed like I had seen the image much more recently. Then I remembered that I had done a somewhat similar drawing about 5 years ago. Now, it is not that unusual that this scene should show up in my work again. I squeezed though many barbed wire fences in my childhood tromping through the fields surrounding our house. What I find really interesting is similar feel of these two images. To me they are rather melancholy and lonely.

Another image that I have been doing since childhood is the sun face. I did a whole series of them in woodcuts (sorry no pictures, they are packed up) when I was at Smith College in 2000. When I was making my sun mask for the Felt United exhibition* I remembered that in middle school I had made a poster with a huge smiley orange sun. And I mean orange as the sphere was actually made to look like an orange with the star shaped stem spot and the word sunkist on it!? I have not found that one...yet...but I found this clay piece which has a '72 on the back.

I did this drawing for a children's dictionary.

The other thing that I forgot was that I liked poultry and rabbits when I was a kid. Is this an example of "the more things change, the more they stay the same"? Here is a rooster done with quilling paper. I remember that took a LONG time to make. A tissue paper 'stained glass' duck. And an "ether bunny".

*Please see the online exhibit of Felt United but don't bother looking for my photos. Thanks to my forgeter I sent my submission form but forgot to attach the images :(

http://gallery.me.com/cynthiareynolds#100106&view=mosaic&sel=450