BEMUSED
Shannon Reynolds
BEMUSED: FINDING MY WAY BACK TO THE MUSE AT VILLAGE STUDIOS STRATFORD
Bemused—an artist’s statement or state of an artist?
I’m seldom at a loss for inspiration in the studio. But this year, the unrelenting news of the day was quelling my drive to paint. My familiar muses—my garden’s flowers, my trove of inherited domestic treasures, the small luxury of winter fruit—seemed like trite relics of a vanishing reality. I turned to my dwindling stock of oranges and painted some subtly allegorical still lifes whose meaning would probably be missed by a casual viewer. I turned to the barnyard animals I see on my country drives as fodder for visual animal fables. Finally, I returned to my life drawing group at Gallery Stratford where, weekly, a diverse collection of artists gather to draw from a live model in an endeavour that seems so understated but is actually a testament to our free society. And with this realization, the muse had returned. My subjects this year may seem disparate but they reflect a journey from confused bemusement back to the muse.
