Elisabeth Geel

Purple Tear and Other Toys for Giacinto

It was during the pandemic that I came up with the idea of using journal pages as a backdrop in my art. People were into decluttering, and as a prolific journal writer I had accumulated dozens of notebooks. I was reading a 1992 Italian diary to see if it contained any type of wisdom that the world could benefit from, or if it was ready for the recyclables. That’s when I came across a story that inspired me to create this work: at a grocery store, a little boy sitting in a shopping cart grabbed my sleeve and asked me, “Where are you going?” It was a question that made me reflect, because in that moment I had no idea where I was going. To thank him I am offering him a purple tear and other toys (even though he must be 24 years old today).

Before I Burn my Journals

Speaking of journals… Keeping a record of one’s life is as wonderful as it is frustrating, because when you read your own biased reporting of the “facts,” you wonder why on earth you were not seeing that it was all one huge mistake. This painting expresses my feelings triggered by reading one of my most heart-wrenching journals: I was dancing an intrinsic tango with love, the magic force that can put you on a celestial pedestal, or burn you up like a candle…

 

It's There for a Reason

In this work I let Nature take over. The journal pages are pushed into the background by a different energy. Mysterious bugs are entering the scene, one is almost sliding off the ice into a stream. The sun has been plucked out of the sky and is lying on the ground. It's there for a reason...