A VIEW ON CREATION, PROCESS, SUBJECT AND CONTENT
The Meandering series came into being to provide relief from a series of burdensome but vitally important subjects, that were fraught with anxiety and sadness. My prints and I had entered a world of violence, terror, loneliness, wholesale murder, and injustice. Although there were many aesthetically transcending moments and technical achievements during these periods, the time had come to leave these troubling and historically important series of printings behind: Sociopolitical, Lightness of Being, Solitary Human Forms, and The Armenian Genocide.
Where was I to go to offset the inhumanity and suffering depicted in these prints? I was responsible for bringing them to life in my art. The savage content and imagery had become overwhelming, had taken a toll on me, weakening the impetus that was the driving force in bringing the Armenian Genocide into the public arena of art. The answer was closer than I thought when an unusual image-making problem became a solution and an inspirational idea for the Meandering series.
In 2002 after finishing a printing procedure, the residual ink remaining on the plate caught my attention. The faint abstract image known as a "ghost", seemed a worthy background candidate for a final image-overprint. Not having an image in mind, I began to think of possibilities before the ink dried. A nearby rope quickly caught my eye that was used to secure my large rolled up prints for further examination at my studio. An exciting process unfolded—that of painting the rope and placing it carefully on the "ghost" imaged plate in an interesting undulating configuration, and then covering with a sheet of newsprint, I hoping for the best, when it passed through the press.
EARLY MEANDERINGS Blead Monoprint 29.5" h x 41.5" w
To my delighted surprise, the two images were joined together beautifully. The rope was transferred into a curlicue-like segment of linear movements, crisscrossing each other. It was beyond anything I had imagined. On an psychological level, the image was something organic beyond the beauty of the abstract— suggesting a figurative profile— thus the title: Figurative Meanderings. Years later this print was awarded a MGNE Honorable Mention.
Fast forward to 2006, the Meanderings series began with the vivid memory of an undulating rope titled Figurative Meanderings. This monoprint would become the subject for a new uplifting series of prints.
The Meanderings series was conceived as having graceful linear forms passing through rectangular windows of space, color, and time. These linear forms share a passing relationship of movement in a serene and gentle manner. Their undulating character express time, proximity, and movement (closeness or distant). They are enveloped by a mood-field of color, together they move gracefully to a rhythmic tune of peacefulness and the passing of time.
The language of the Meanderings series, generally speaking, is a poetic combination of graphic symbols and mindful translations. Anthropomorphic and metaphoric associations are a means of capturing the human pathways undulating in a relational wonder and beauty.
John Avakian, 2019
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FIGURATIVE MEANDERINGS Monoprint Framed 32.5" x 25.5"
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