Mike Southern

Artist Statement for March 2020: Lost Mythologies

My work has changed from meticulously observed black and white landscape etchings into small, spontaneously created landscapes in oil to its’ current iteration of large scale figurative paintings. The paintings are new. The technical intricacies of oil painting were plumbed as a natural extension of my art making practice. It feels like a new phase of the same creative life as well as a rebirth.

The introduction of the figures into the landscapes began roughly in 2005 but my overall body of work maintains, at its’ core, an ongoing investigation into finding our place within the natural world. The figure in the landscape as a motif has its’ roots in the earliest scrawling of human culture. The mythology and storytelling of indigenous cultures, western civilization, and my own amalgams of memory, invention and reflection are thrown into the narrative mix. So many of these current and past civilizations have the earth and nature itself as the centerpiece of human creation and spiritual rebirth. These new allegorical images are not without an agenda. They are offering a way forward and through our current condition. The characters depicted in this body of work are stage actors in a new mythology.

Over time, this narrative has evolved and is now taking shape as it travels a more specific path. The primacy of the feminine form and feminine power has always been a key element in this work. The Old World is gone and with it the quest for human control, domination and subjugation. Values of interdependency with nature, the integration of the spiritual with the corporal, ritual adornment and aesthetics are all themes that have emerged. The image making itself has dictated this narrative. These images begin with an arresting gesture or an evocative landscape. The story is then built around these elements. Research of mythic cultural patterns, ethnological discourse and a host of other aesthetic, spiritual and scientific resources help to inform these constantly evolving narratives. This is a deep well.