Oysters have the ability to take a tiny foreign particle, like a grain of sand, and then layer it with nacre until a pearl is formed. This is a slow process but creates a thing of beauty. Ginger Mallard does something like this with painting: she starts with an idea, an abstraction, then meditates on it until something starts to form as she paints. When she first applies some paint she doesn’t really know where it is going; it is almost like automatic writing in that there is no specific object that she wishes to portray. Rather it is a process of applying paint, reflecting upon it and coming back to put on new layers. As the work progresses she often uses fine lines to surround parts of the painting and then use these lines to connect with other parts until finally there is skein of lines connecting the various parts of the picture. These lines form an abstract inner framework that might correspond to the warp and woof of a rug on a loom.
Specifically the source of her meditation in this new series has been astrophysics and the theories of how the universe was formed. She reencountered this material upon seeing a TV interview with the Nobel laureate Richard Feynman. In that program he described the process called the “Big Bang” which states that there was an actual beginning of the entire universe when a tiny particle (called a “singularity”) exploded with tremendous force. The resulting fall out turned into matter that distributed itself in space and formed what became the universe. All of this is quite abstract. Ginger spent a lot of time meditating on these ideas. She remembered reading “The Tao of Physics” by Fritjof Capra in the early 70’s, which correlates traditional wisdom of eastern mysticism with theories of modern physics. It purports to show how the creation myth is actually consonant with our present scientific explanation of the origin of the universe. She gradually began to incorporate this fusion of physics and eastern lore into her painting. One result of this effort is her installation entitled: “The Big Bang”.
This work has a painting at the center called “The Cosmic Dance.” It is acrylic on paper and is matted under glass. This is based on a painting of the Hindu deity Shiva with four arms and four legs. The image has been abstracted so that it is not easy to make out the figure but on close inspection the image is there. There are many component parts that make up this painting which can be cut out like parts of a jigsaw puzzle and then reassembled. She has done this by painting the piece again and cutting out each fragment. Then she created each separate fragment again but made each piece slightly smaller, and then reduced each fragment once again. The fragments are then placed all around the central painting creating an installation. What this does is to effectively blow up the original painting into a series component parts. These parts are successively reduced in size and spread around the painting in concentric circles. The effect is rather like a stone falling into a pond and making a series of waves which ripple out from the center.
The result of this junction of painting and science is a highly original three dimensional work of art. It has grown out of a deep sense that there is an underlying connection between cosmology and scientific truth. Neither topic is often the subject of visual interpretation. Finding a way to link them together has been a signal achievement. The TV Show “Numb3rs” has posted Ginger’s work on the program’s blog site. “The Big Bang” can be seen at Frame Warehouse, 814 Dempster in Evanston,Il. from May 8th .Vol. 1 Issue1
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