Exhibition Dates: July 30 - August 13, 2022
Opening Reception, Sat, July 30 from 5-7pm
Leave it to Christina Hale, a decidedly avant-garde artist who captures in her art the zeitgeist of her generation, to update the Tarot Card which originated in the 15th century.
Although I consider myself more of a pantheist I have found myself driven back into certain forms of Christian prayer. As agnostic as one may be we quickly seek God on the battlefield. The Native American Church has conscripted Christianity in the way that most forms of mutualism elegantly mine a body for needed nutrients in order to survive. I was lucky to sit in ceremony with Jim Harithas and Irv Tepper in 1993. I have always been drawn to Native American culture as it embodies a connection and attention to nature that is essential to humanity s common sense and intuitive wisdom. Irv Tepper was my sculpture teacher at the San Francisco Art Institute and Jim Harithas a powerful curator from Houston, Texas. From this convergence began my career as an artist.
At the San Francisco Art Institute I studied film making and began drawing with Sam Tchakalian. Perspective and anatomy began to give me the tools to recreate the real world. The tarot drawings are many layered constructions. For me erasing has constituted a large part of drawing. Piles of eraser dust in the studio. I remember a painting teacher encouraging me to sketch out the forms before applying paint. Compared to the masters I have had a very brief education in pictorial arts. It takes knowledge of a few techniques to create an illusion… reflection, sky, trees. Drawing the Crown Deck Tarot definitely pushed my drawing skills.
I feel that the imagination is prospective. Our times have molded some excellent prospectors…Matthew Barney, Raymond Pettibon, Rothko, Frida Kahlo, Dali, Marta Stang and Sam Francis being some of the visual artists that interest me. The Bauhaus, The Impressionists, The Surrealists and Michelangelo Buonarroti… inspiration from the past. Although I began in abstract paint my first drawings were encouraged by Lia Harithas Blyth, Jim s daughter, in New York City in 1996. “Make them big!”. So from the abandonment, isolation and dystopia came my first figures and later objects in pencil. I feel that somehow my work is an act of contrition. That drawing structured my nihilism. I am interested in Shamanism… in the power of dreams, the subconscious, intuition. My early work seems to represent my struggles with conscience as I moved through different states of being. Paganism perhaps Shamanistic Psychotherapy!
In studying the Tarot I was forced to reevaluate the importance of composition. Because the Tarot dates from the 1500 s it gives any artist seeking to emulate it rich symbolism to recreate. When I draw for myself I rarely have an allegory or archetypal perspective. The mythology of my early work related to myself. The Tarot, when analyzed as a work of art, is a complex combination of historical knowledge, intuition and luck of the draw. Interpreting cards in the context of a Tarot spread is an art beyond the classically inspired images themselves. The Crown Deck Tarot represents my very primary knowledge of representation. I have no deep understanding of Cartomancy but I gravitate towards Alejandro Jodorowsky s use of the deck to subjectively encourage an inner life, to heal. To quote him “To know the way to use the language of objects and the symbolic vocabulary in order to produce certain affects in people; basically, how specifically to direct the unconscious in its own language, be that by words, by objects, by acts.” He emphasizes as well that “One cannot become a shaman or a sorcerer if one is not born into a primitive context.” I feel that, through my art, I search for this primitive context. Color, religion, numerology, mythology, astrology, alchemy all play a part in the images of the Tarot. The cards encourage a type of comparative analysis as their symbols lead the reader on.
Christina Hale, Temperance , 2020-2021
Pencil, ink, and, acrylic on paper
Signed on verso
Sheet: 9 x 12 inches