A recent post I made to Substack’s notes has been my only experience there of what is, for me at least, a “viral” post.
I posted five images from a series of small watercolour “imaginary landscapes” that I made in 2020 and wondered whether they might make for an interesting zine.
While I try not to pay too much attention to the number of likes and shares I get for things I post, it was hard to ignore getting roughly 500% more likes than one of my usual notes.
The feelings I’ve had so far around those images getting far more attention than anything else I have posted are complex.
I do feel very good about the images and I’m glad that people connect with them. Each 3×3 inch image in the series of 48 images was a confluence of memory, imagination, and the flow pigment in water as it bleeds into and adheres to paper.
I wrote back in 2020…
These images are formed from memory, imagination, and the emotional connection I have from direct experience of environment, season, land, water, and weather.
The complexity of my current feelings about these paintings has more to do with how, as an artist, I might want my work to be seen. As part of that, there is a subtle friction in having older work — that doesn’t entirely represent where I am now — strike such a stronger chord in people than my current work.
But I do understand why these images connect better with more people and even more so right now given the dire circumstances so many people find themselves in physically and emotionally.
These images can more easily activate eyes and memory and our shared connection to places we have been or long to experience. They are also abstract enough that they work purely as colour and texture play. The organic branching forms that watercolour technique can contain drawn us humans into spaces that are inside us that we may not have a direct conscious awareness of.
It’s not a bad thing that images like these can be “easier” and more readily available for people.
There is no assumed meaning to discern in images that suggest natural spaces. We are all going to have some set of sense and emotional memories tied to landscape.
In my mini-viral moment, it has been fun to shout out, “136 likes!” “267 likes!” “500 likes!!” to my partner throughout the day. It feels good that people find beauty in these paintings and maybe even some small solace in some very difficult times.
These small paintings were made at a difficult time and they were also a balm for me to create.
At the time, my partner was especially ill, in a darker time of chronic illness and often confined to bed. I made these paintings on a small folding table from my side of the bed so that we could spend more of our time together.
We were also being evicted from our home of ten years at that time and were trying to rapidly reduce our lives to be shifted out of a city we could no longer afford.
These paintings just came into being.
I had no plan for them and my intention was to test out working with watercolour paints after not using them for a long time. I wanted those vibrant liquid colours flowing into each other, branching and that sparked these simple but deep natural sky and ground vignettes into being.
…
So these paintings were powerful for me at the time and they remain important to me.
That was part of what prompted me to think back to them when I have recently wondered about making a zine. But it was kind of a thought in passing without any shape to it.
With the compliments and ideas I have received from people responding to that note, I do feel compelled to make something. My thought is to produce a small square zine that will feature some of the original images plus some new writing to complement them.
So, thank you to everyone for the kind reaction to these paintings and stay tuned for news about the possible zine.