More from the Cerescapes series.
Here are a couple of my latest 12×12 paintings. I’ve decided to call them “Cerescapes.” Because it’s exhausting to keep coming up with new names, I like to give the smaller ones the same name with a series number. My last series of small paintings was called “Fragments.” I’d originally meant for them to be modular, to work together when placed side by side, so that each would be a fragment of a larger whole. It didn’t work out that way, as each takes on a life of its own during the painting process. But I kept the name because I didn’t have time or energy to come up with something new before they were to be shown (last May).
Fast forward to now. I started putting new Fragment numbers on the latest paintings, when it dawned on me that the name wasn’t so appropriate for reasons described above. After the usual amount of mental anguish, I settled on Cerescape because each of these works is the product of my own mind and its machinations, or a landscape of the cerebrum, so to speak. I also discovered, during my searching, that Ceres was the ancient Roman goddess of grain, fertility, and motherly relationships, and that’s where the word “cereal” comes from. I’m sure that’s relevant to my own work in some way.
