DIANA FOLSOM

Bergamot Station, Santa Monica, CA

2004

These paintings are meditations on human will, inspired by the poetic words of Shakespeare. His plays show passionate struggles: loving, hating, striving, dreaming. Yet in the end, what does it all mean? "The rest is silence," Hamlet says.  

 

Humankind strives to "leave a mark" with words, ideas, and expressions of power. Many of these works show the marks and traces humans leave on the earth, and others are simple, iconic images found repeated throughout the plays: stars, starflowers, words, handprints, rivers, birds. These signs and marks are as ancient as humankind, yet with time, natural cycles and forces sweep them away. In art, however, bare human intentions can survive.

October 2010