Monday, October 10, 2011

Bombardment in the city

 I have been thinking all day.

This is the "egg" I am referencing
I don't really know where it began. I think maybe it all began with my Pegasus egg. Yep, that's it. If you don't remember, I made a painting back in Spring that gave birth (no pun intended) to the idea of protection in the form of a city and an egg. I call it Pegasus' egg. Again, why a mythological horse named pegasus would have an egg I have no idea, but that's not the point...

From this "battle scene," I felt bombardment in the city, and what I was creating was protection. I was working to protect this strange egg formation (sunny-side up).
Protection.

Let me back up.

I enjoy painting figures.
I want to incorporate figures into my work.
I prefer to paint woman figures.
I basically associate (in my mind) all women figures with mothers, the maternal, and fertility.
I have a certain disposition about these three things.

Do we see where this is going? For some reason today I have become extremely interested in maternalism, behaviors of mothers, and the characteristics of mothers. Not even of motherhood specifically, but what makes mothers, mothers. This is a semi-new thought process, as in I have thought about it for awhile but have never written it down. I am trying to make this idea exist by writing it out. It's not a complete thought yet. I was going to mull over this idea in my sketchbook for awhile, but I figured I might as well search for my answers publicly.

Is it feminism? Is it maternal loss? What it is, I don't know.

I do know that I have a lot of reading to do.

Here's what good ole' wikipedia has to say about Maternalism:


Maternalism refers to an attitude or a policy reminiscent of the non-hierarchic pattern of a family based on matriarchy.

In this form of system, women use society in order to protect children from unnecessary harm. This system is the opposite of paternalism; which refers to a policy that resembles θε hierarchic pattern of a family based on patriarchy. Opponents of paternalism (and proponents of maternalism), such as John Stuart Mill, claim that liberty supersedes safety in terms of actions that only affect oneself.

I also found an interesting article on Neo-Maternalism.

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