Au fond des choses

“Au Fond des Choses” Series Artist Statement

For me, a child of six and seven living in France during WWII, home was half of a bombed-out house in a tiny hamlet at the edge of a forest. Those were not bad, or sad years. True, there were nightmares of imagined 5 am raids. I lay in bed long after bedtime straining to capture my parents worried whispered voices. But when I entered the quiet fragrant woods, the rushing river that was the world slowed to a trickle, and I could suddenly hear leaves falling. I studied how things grew, fought for air, rose high and fell, and when I burrowed into the piles at my feet, beneath the twigs and roots, there were acorns raising spindly white stems, new life from old. There were surprises too, among the layered sere leaves: a caterpillar, a frog, a spent shell from a long ago war. This is how I grew, and how my secret self was formed. I made up little poems, and thought about the world in that forest.