Artist's Note: 2 Layers

Sometimes in working with images, themes emerge.  For example, for a while I was creating images similar to the one above.

An editor asked me for a title to another in this series, and only then I came to understand the meaning of these images.  Emptiness, a void is represented by the underlying blackness.  Over it, layer after layer of some sort of flimsy colored covering is applied, as if to cover the emptiness, to hide it.  This symbolizes diversions we invent and participate in, which distract us from facing the depths of dark stillness.  These distractions vary with culture and personality, but could include substance abuse, a life spent on the internet clicking from site to site, or many other things.

Sometime later, I found myself returning to these same elements, but in a different way, with a new series of images, like the one combined with Scream:

Again there is a framework in front and something beyond, but now it is not darkness.  Now the image has evolved.  The framework constructed allows us to glimpse what lies behind it, an emerging light, a source, radiance.  The meaning has changed, almost to the inverse of before.  Now the framework is not meant to hide what lies beyond; instead it functions to reveal.  This could represent many inventions of humanity that allow us to face stillness, and even to embrace it, including spiritual practices, science and art. Sometimes they reveal different aspects, sometimes they overlap. 

Both images are concerned with constructs, and constructs can have negative or positive influence in our lives.  The important thing is to notice them, and to choose the ones that suit your intention.

In the case of the image paired with Scream, both the poem and the dialogue with the Editor made me understand the framework as sound, such as chanting. Which led to the title: Within a Song.

- Steve Wing