Walk from the Valley

**_Love Letters_**

Acrylic, Graphite, and Conte Paintings on vintage book and paper.

Collection of love letters written by historical figures and famous lovers throughout the ages. The phrases of the hand-written pieces correspond to loving, passionate, sometimes humorous excerpts from each letter, the text partially obscured by paint ground.

In these pieces, I appropriate a pre-existing text, here letters, and obscure the original document which serves to act as a mirror for the ideas, needs, and desires of the viewer. The idea of covering is twofold: First, simply, that these are private letters. Intimate thoughts and words, often delivered in secret, hidden, intended only for two people, and their eyes alone. Secondly, the hidden words act as a metaphor for the subconscious – an awareness and the thoughts that exist just under the surface, almost out of reach, barely perceptible. The unspoken that I believe exists in us all. As the words are concealed and the paint eventually dries, small, seemingly trivial details – random words and phrases emerge, as if bubbling from the subconscious, while the larger picture and context are erased.

The pieces are always painted and presented in a set of two, representing the duality of nature and suggesting that there are two sides to every story. Certainly, this work is about human emotion — the spectrum from love to hate, or indifference rather, and all the messiness in-between. While these pieces may seem simple in execution, the concept runs deeper. I take much time pondering, searching for just the correct phrase to write on the finished piece. It must resonate with me. If not initially, then after I obliterate the text. The words often find me. The paint, which resembles Rorschach inkblots, forms a ground from which I tease out words. I purposely scribble, giving the work a dashed-off quality, another metaphor for emotion. For me, anything "too perfect," too calligraphic would just be robotic and negate the feeling. Beauty in imperfection. The pieces become a palimpsest of sorts, subverting and transforming language, creating a new form.

Love Letters: Adoration - Robert Browning to Elizabeth Barrett, Friday 10 January, 1845

A highly coterminous creation of a sculpture from an ongoing series originally envisioned during recurring REM dreams of  artist Kyle Yip. Sculptures that once appeared immaterial are meticulously reverse-engineered into tactile, obdurate objects. 

The Mandukya Upanishad scriptures describe dreaming as one of four states of consciousness, the other three being the waking, sleeping, and turiya state. The dream is an expression of an involuntary psychic process not controlled by our conscious outlook. It describes our status as it is with no regard for our conjectures as to how things should be. Carl Jung has therefore made it a rule to present dreams as physiological facts of nature. That is to say although dreams may be abstract to interpret, they are invaluable for diagnosis because they never lie.

This neo-avantgarde practice of circumventing the artist's subjective input in the creation of art alludes to the original avant-garde with the incorporation of the readymade and serial form. He realized  how visual attention is augmented through the hypnotic, meditative, and subliminal concentration and serial repetition of the readymade.

The manifested dream sculpture represents "soul searching," and contain its latent meaning. It could be read as anti-intellectual, where the material itself also takes a central, even genetic quality in synecdochic relation to the whole series. Language was articulated to work exclusively through symbols, dividing nature into parts and actions. These computer keyboards were created using similar found objects from the dreams in which they were initally conceived, exploring addiction to searching. When Freud talks about the obscurity of the "dream facade," he is not referring to the dream itself, but is rather projecting upon the dream his own misunderstanding. The narrow-mindedness of North American rationalism dismisses the dream as having a false front only because we fail to decipher it. We would be much better off to admit we are dealing with a language that is unintelligible simply because we cannot read it, not because it has a facade. We do not necessarily have to support such a text to begin with, but it is important for us to understand how to read it.

Yip recognizes his work as both the diagnosis of a cultural condition, but also an opportunity for viewers to meditate on their dreams.

Dream Keyboard A1

marcus on the living room floor

sign

Blue 

Harmonics is part of the 'Mystic Geometry' collection, inspired by spirituality, and the ‘sacred geometric forms’ found in nature and architecture. These geometric elements are symbols of an inward reflection that occur as we delve deeper into an expression of qualities within ourselves.

Harmonics

This t is a watering point which may have been called Station 68 on the Atbara line in the Sudan as I recall it looking some 60+ years ago. Having been seeking in vain for gazelles on the Surrey savannahs these last few weeks I have been driven once again to raid my earliest memories for a theme. Somehow those early memories are the ones that made the deepest immersions. So I am pretty sure this would have been the view looking south, except I don't think there were any hills. I introduced that because I wanted an arc to play against the rectangle.

Watering Point

Generations

The ancient Greeks had many representations of aerial Female Gods such as Gorgon Medusa, Artemis, Harpies, etc.  and often are depicted as Female Birds of Prey.  The myth and iconography of Aerial Females persists through history, although in more Patriarchal societies, their power is denied, becoming more like ornaments. Beneath the latex shroud is a Mano Fica, an amulet for magical protection against the evil eye primarily found in Italy and in America among descendents of Italian immigrants. The Mano Fica in this work is defiant, a counter-gesture against the patriarchal system.

Bitch Falcon- APPARATUS 

60x80cm
Mixed media, giclee, Acrylic, oil, pastels, spray paint on canvas.

Portrait 431.2021

God Bless

From series, "Son of Liberia."

  
Eleven years ago, I left Liberia with memories of an orange sun at seven in the morning, of a soft orange gleam in a familiar town and of a boy running on golden sand. Perhaps nostalgia lit these memories orange — I was certainly aware of the poverty. Yet, whenever I thought about Liberia, I remembered only the sun, the familiar town, and the boy running on golden sand.
  
  

Faith's Water

Last

Oil on Canvas, 36" x 60", 2022, St. Louis, MO

The Son

Asymetry

The Maltese Loneliness

Yellow Sea

I worked on the series «STONE WOMEN» during the autumn until the end of December 2022\. Four months of work allowed me to analyze and explore human moods and reactions to the terrible events of the present, to think about the importance of preserving cultural heritage and the role of women in historical disasters.

In my youth, while travelling my homeland, I got acquainted with the art of nomadic tribes that once lived on the territory of Ukraine. Namely, with their sculptures - the so-called «steles». People call them stone «babas». Usually these are statues of women, and sometimes men, holding a bowl filled with the spirit of ancestors at the level of the stomach. Even generations that lived thousands of years ago realized the importance of preserving national memory.

No matter how much history is rewritten, there is always something «eternal». According to various sources of information, these sculptures are more than a thousand years old. Some of the varieties of stone statues date back to the times before our era. Their image has always been mysterious and full of powerful energy for me. They still stand in the same place proudly, calmly and straight, in humble expectation of peace and justice. Maybe, that is why they are petrified.

> They stood for thousands of years and saw everything. They saw all our wars, repressions, the Holodomor. Now they are witnessing the Russian-Ukrainian war. They are witnesses of decay, witnesses of cynicism. At the same time, they are witnesses of human uplift and human strength.

The collection shows the power of a woman who, despite grief and trials, gives the world a new life. By trials I mean global problems, which are never lacking in world history. No wonder a woman has long been considered the guardian of the family.

It is important for any person, especially for a woman, for a mother, for a grandmother, to preserve her home, to protect her children from troubles and hardships, to keep them warm. It is unbearable painful to watch when someone destroys your home, razing it to the ground. Leaving a ruins and a scorching ruthless fire instead of home warmth.

Tragedies are happening, generations are passing away. Traditions are forgotten, culture is distorted. It is important to pass on your identity to future generations. Do not let them forget their roots. My stone women are dressed in authentic Ukrainian clothes - embroidered shirt. Their chests are decorated with corals. Embroidery, as an ancient craft, for me is a symbol of durability, a symbol of cultural continuity.

People live one day at a time. Without establishing connections between the past and the present, between the present and the future. They establish it only when they lose something.

> «...we establish the importance of the things only when we feel that we lose it. But it is usually too late.»

  
**News of September 2022**

  
The complex of stone women in the city of Izium consisted of eight sculptures. Several of the statues could not withstand the Russian invasion of Ukraine. It was destroyed during the occupation of the city.

View the [link](https://culturecrimes.mkip.gov.ua/?p=1602&fbclid=IwAR2Fjl7byC8xgymtfsG3ssoralIJwwfCe%5F98r4GRNNfFVEuhRxwqkMazkSg) of the Ministry of Culture and Information Policy of Ukraine on the damage of the Izium Fortress.

Now we are losing priceless cultural and historical artifacts, losing historical and cultural memory. Culture is built for centuries, but destroyed by generations in few years. Why are we still living one day at a time?

Stone Women Nr. 4

DJ King Rico plays a tune for my new series, Portraits: Working Hands.

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