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Home

The image of home is a simple outline or shape of a house, much like I drew in early childhood, sans doors, windows and the smoking chimney.

The shape was developed with the upright triangle of the “Within Three Sides” series, adding below the next tantric shape of the square; the three lines of the triangle transform into the 5 lines of the house.

My home in which I grew up was occurring often in my dreams, distorted and unreal, but still recognizable.  At the time I was introduced to The Poetics of Space, a 1958 book by Gaston Bachelard. “Bachelard applies the method of phenomenology to architecture basing his analysis not on purported origins but on lived experience of architecture.” (Wikipedia)

I was struck by the likening of the attic to the mind and spirit, reaching upward to the ether.  The body of the house becomes the physical self. 
Then the basement symbolizes the darker side of the psyche, requiring a candle to explore those corners of the mind.

The red line of life energy often outlines this shape in the work of the “Passages” series and here in the “Home” series, encasing the memories embedded in ourselves and our home. The series “Home” and some of the “Within Three Sides” began as monotypes on Arches 88 paper.  Encaustic and oil were then added after the work was affixed to the panels.

Catherine Eaton Skinner

2016