Twizzler - sketch for Ex Kathedra
2011
Acrylic on Plaster of Paris on Found Lumber
11x12 inches
It is like Richard Dawkins story of the mud puddle.
In The Blind Watchmaker,
he imagines a sentient mud puddle.
It is making the case for intelligent design
over evolution by stating that
"only an intelligent designer could create
a dent in the ground that so perfectly fits
the shape of its muddy water.
This environment, this dent in the clay,
could have only have been designed
with mud puddles in mind."
Hmmm. Maybe it is the other way around.
Maybe it is the mud puddle that is
conforming to the dent that happened to be
in the ground,
in the place
that the water
fell to earth.
Are humans master of their environment?
Or over the generations,
are they continually being evolved,
for good or ill,
by the environments they fall into?
All this from Plaster of Paris,
with a thin layed of acrylic paint,
scratched through.
I think the mud puddle musings
are simply a result of the fact
that the muddy plaster fell through
two bolt holes in the underlying support
of found lumber.
In The Blind Watchmaker,
he imagines a sentient mud puddle.
It is making the case for intelligent design
over evolution by stating that
"only an intelligent designer could create
a dent in the ground that so perfectly fits
the shape of its muddy water.
This environment, this dent in the clay,
could have only have been designed
with mud puddles in mind."
Hmmm. Maybe it is the other way around.
Maybe it is the mud puddle that is
conforming to the dent that happened to be
in the ground,
in the place
that the water
fell to earth.
Are humans master of their environment?
Or over the generations,
are they continually being evolved,
for good or ill,
by the environments they fall into?
All this from Plaster of Paris,
with a thin layed of acrylic paint,
scratched through.
I think the mud puddle musings
are simply a result of the fact
that the muddy plaster fell through
two bolt holes in the underlying support
of found lumber.
Sharon Hogg is a visual artist working in Calgary Alberta and Lombardy Ontario, Canada. She holds a Bachelors of Fine Art and a Masters of Fine Art from the Alberta College of Art and Design.
Where humans intersect with unseen natural forces, she imagines what lies behind or beneath the surface. More than seeing, she wants to feel the backstory, the understory, the glue that holds it all together. Her work seeks to bring that underlying level of awareness closer to the visible and the touchable.
The Sublime, New Materialism and the Vorticists are influences.