Close to the River
Erin B. Payne
Painting, Drawing, Mixed Media
website
A homing pigeon can be taken hundreds of miles from home and it always knows how to return. I find there to be a great beauty and simplicity in homing pigeons innate sense. For me, the idea of finding my way home is much more elusive. The idea of home that I continually find myself returning to however is an almost magical imaginary place where warm childhood memories mix with traditional western ideals of family and domesticity. Perhaps because my favorite early memories were made through a child's eyes, they are somewhat childlike ideals. Just the same, I carry with me a longing for this mythical version of home. If I were to go home, like the homing pigeon, this is where I'd go to. This is a place that I do ritualistically create, in my work.
In my work I also use imagery of traditional women's work in the home. It is a sacred part of my idea of home and the core of domesticity and warmth. While working on canvas and board, I paint, draw, collage, make use of found objects and even sew into canvas or paper. By layering these materials the intention is to create the feeling of a nonlinear story unfolding in pieces like a quilt or tapestry. Sometimes there are clear boundaries and sometimes the images bleed into one another like the memories themselves. Some areas of the work are left raw like spaces of longing or meditation between thoughts. The pigeons are a part of the narrative of each piece, sometimes carrying messages with them in their beaks or attached to their bodies. Other pigeons are simply flying home or engaged in their own life rituals of nesting, mating and raising their young.
Searching for what home means to each one of us is, I believe, a universal quest. My intention is to have the work create a dialogue with the viewer to look at their own definition of home. Like a homing pigeon, where is that sacred place that you desire to go home to?
