"Only a river gonna make things right"
Since the first time I heared "Only a River" by Bob Weir I had a strange and pleasant feeling about this line. Maybe because my childhood home was near a river or maybe he was talking about a last safe place, a sanctuary, I still can't process the whole feeling.
On the other hand, there is a famous jungle or sea? question people ask each other to find out about their tastes. I prefer jungle but sea is magical too so my answer is something in between, a lake.
It's really hard for me to find a proper way to start what I wanna say but maybe "fernweh" (german word) which means "farsickness" is a right choice.
A hard-to-describe-feeling of being homesick for somewhere you’ve never actually been.
First time in 2010 I heared about the Justin Vernon story around his album " For Emma, Forever Ago" and his epic 3 months residency in some Wisconsin woods.
Hearing the album over and over, over the years and reading about the region ignited a love-from-afar feeling in me.
So I knew about the Wisconsin nature and climate, seen many videos and virtual tours from the state, the Milwuakee Art Museum and stuff but it was always like a mere hobby.
Gathered loads of youtube videos and screenshots from Wisconsin Lakes to start my project even though I live far from there.
The other side of the story is, I have dedicated the first decade of my career to the life I have lived here in Iran and the dystopia I created in about 300 paintings I did these years. You can read about it in my first blog post and the About section.
These recent weeks I started to feel a demand to find a new path in my art.
I have done anything I could to narrate the dystopian Iran I have lived in and felt a heavy exhaustion and a near-break-down experience doing all these hundreds of agony-and-anger themed artworks.
People always loved them and I loved being part of a social change, but the potential is nearly done for me these weeks.
Out of nowhere, a single 5-second sequence from new season of Family Guy series gave birth to my new huge project.
It was a flashback showing a typical Wisconsin lake full of jet skis.
Wisconsin has over 15000 lakes and 40% of them have names.
Landscape paintings always were a big part of art history and there are many different approaches to them.
Artists dedicated their lifetime careers sometimes to capture a perfect oeuvre of landscapes (Van Gogh), still life (Morandi) or far far lands (Jean-Leon Gerome).
Dedicating my career (or at least the major part of my career) to capture the soul of Wisconsin Lakes and leaving a huge legacy for the state, myself, history and ....;
Why not?
A magical realism kind of approach to paint Wisconsin Lakes is going to be my new life.
These days I'm reading and watching thousands of videos and websites to gather information about Wisconsin Lakes and writing in my notebooks and doing sketches and even starting the first painting in the series (Red Cedar Lake).
I know it's going to be a long long path but I try my best to be good at this madness and visit Wisconsin Lakes after all and spend my lifetime capturing their scenery and their spirit. Trying to leave a a soulful legacy to future of earth-art-environment-culture ecosystem and also the respected state of Wisconsin.
Trying to leave this message to the future artists , no matter how strange, dedicate your art to the idea you deeply appreciate, it is definitely possible and essential to promote the concept of dedication, you just gotta find the real deal.
There is a lot more to say, so many questions, so many issues, will write soon.
First painting, my notes, some info I am gathering.
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