4. Repeating
on embracing motifs
Are there certain things you always notice when you’re out and about? I am preoccupied with, among other things, windows. Windows and curtains. Of course, I’m not alone in this. Artists have engaged with the idea of a window, and what it represents, for centuries. In fact, there’s a group exhibition ending soon at Haverkamp Fleistenschneider in Germany called My World Play that’s all about windows. I’m in love with this work in the exhibition by the late German artist Norbert Schwontkowski:
In recent months, I’ve shifted gears when it comes to thinking about the motifs in my work. The change in perspective was sparked in part by Danica Pinteric’s poetically articulated analysis of Maja Klaassens’ wave motif in an IG-posted excerpt from the exhibition text for Maja’s recent show The view is total sea at Joys in Toronto:
“For several years, or maybe her whole life, Maja has been followed by a recurring shape. The dorsal fin, the rose’s thorn, a tooth, a talon, the perfect ocean wave. A triangle with a curved tip; the queering of the strongest shape. For Maja this shape is both abundant and regenerative, though it typically appears as a sliver or a fragment removed from a greater whole.”
I think it was especially the image of being followed persistently by the shape that got me. You are the object of your motif’s pursuit. It feels mystical and important when I remember to look at it like this.
So moving forward, rather than uselessly berating myself for always coming back to the same few subjects over and over again, I’m turning to my repeat offenders and addressing them with more intention, curiosity, and respect.
To mark this shift, I’d like to present to you a selection of window photos from my camera roll, some of which I’m using right now as reference images for my painting series:
An artist friend, Ali, suggested that curtains may well represent, for me, boundaries. Interesting, as I notice now that the windows I’m drawn to all have something either completely or partially blocking the view in.
I’d be curious to know, what are the motifs in your life and/or work? Is there something you notice everywhere? Something mundane, or maybe oddly specific? For example, one of my weirder ones is messy little piles of string or string-looking materials…
What recurring shape won’t stop following you? And do you have a theory as to why? Do you bring it home with you and collect it? Or collect images of it?
xx Clara
P.S. While researching windows in art, I discovered a lovely website called WindowSwap, “a place on the internet where people from around the world share the view from their windows to help someone else relax, focus, meditate and travel without moving.” I enjoyed the intimacy of seeing into someone’s backyard or the trinkets on their windowsill. And the sounds are soothing too—I landed on one in Argentina where Dua Lipa was playing faintly in the background.
“If you've heard this story before, don't stop me, because I'd like to hear it again.”
— Groucho Marx
