Out of the Hoop

Work in Progress, 2015, 54x66 inches

There's still much to be done, but here is the first glimpse of the whole image. I'm not sure yet just how I will tweak it - that will require a good amount of sitting and gazing upon the piece. I'm overall pretty happy with it but I'm not sure about the tree line - maybe it needs more emphasis. I might also adjust the top of the Cap of Maintenance so the fox will be a little more comfortable, and maybe do a little more work on the scroll.

Last week I was off following a wild thread about the sublime, as I feel it applies to Louis Nicolas's work. Sublimity is the mixture of fear and fascination that one experiences in the presence of the divine. In the words of Edmund Burke, a philosopher who was 100 years after Louis Nicolas, the sublime is "dark, uncertain and confused". The concept is found in almost all cultures. The Zuni saw it as a relationship between beauty and danger. Another philosopher, Rudolf Otto  compared the sublime with his newly coined concept of the numinous. The numinous comprises terror, Tremendum, but also a strange fascination, Fascinans.

I'm still playing with this idea. We'll see where it leads. And I'm still undecided as to how the piece will be shown. I could stretch it as I have done previous works in the series, or I might mount it on a poleas a gonfalon. (A medival form of displaying a banner. I had no idea there was a name for such a thing. Wikipedia is so smart!)