{"id":10184,"date":"2015-08-12T14:07:54","date_gmt":"2015-08-12T21:07:54","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.noahsaterstrom.com\/workaday\/?p=10184"},"modified":"2016-11-01T20:17:42","modified_gmt":"2016-11-02T03:17:42","slug":"when-we-were-sun-worshippers-i","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.noahsaterstrom.com\/workaday\/when-we-were-sun-worshippers-i\/","title":{"rendered":"When We Were Sun-Worshippers I."},"content":{"rendered":"<p>18&#8243; x 24&#8243;<br \/>\n<a href=\"https:\/\/www.noahsaterstrom.com\/workaday\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/08\/sunworshippers_01_small.jpg\"><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/www.noahsaterstrom.com\/workaday\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/08\/sunworshippers_01_small.jpg\" alt=\"sunworshippers_01_small\" width=\"500\" class=\"alignnone size-full wp-image-10185\" srcset=\"https:\/\/www.noahsaterstrom.com\/workaday\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/08\/sunworshippers_01_small.jpg 1000w, https:\/\/www.noahsaterstrom.com\/workaday\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/08\/sunworshippers_01_small-300x223.jpg 300w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 1000px) 100vw, 1000px\" \/><\/a><br \/>\nI just finished a group of eighteen oil paintings for a show at La Esquina in NYC (Soho). It will show from September 1st through November.<\/p>\n<p>The imagery in these paintings is heavily influenced by my ancestral roots in Natchez, Mississippi. I specifically draw from memoirs recounting the family fleeing during the Civil War to the little town of Shubuta. Themes vary but repeating motifs include a family on the move, houses and landscapes, classical statuary, a fountain, wagon mules, a lion-like creature, suns, and celestial eyes.<\/p>\n<p>There are stories behind these paintings, but to borrow from Katherine Bradford: <em>all decisions are visual decisions<\/em>. The paintings are not necessarily about a specific story or identity or politics or a stance. They\u2019re about what will work, visually, with what\u2019s there. Will this image\/mark help the painting or shut it down? Often you don\u2019t know until you\u2019ve made the mark.<\/p>\n<p>Each painting has its own unique system of governance. I try to stick to a theme or an approach, but, of course, as soon as an image begins I am subject to its peculiarities. In the end, I measure success by whether the painting feels unified <em>despite<\/em> itself. While I am thinking about Southern ancestral narratives \u2013 including the hard, sometimes shameful and always baffling reality of slave owning forebears \u2013 the images are not fixed and I am happy with as many readings as the paintings can hold.<\/p>\n<p>So many thanks to <a href=\"http:\/\/www.sheltonwalsmith.com\/\" target=\"_blank\">Shelton Walsmith<\/a> for the invitation to make and show this work. I\u2019ll post images from the show here for the next couple of weeks.<\/p>\n<h3>Related Images:<\/h3>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>18&#8243; x 24&#8243; I just finished a group of eighteen oil paintings for a show at La Esquina in NYC (Soho). It will show from September 1st through November. The imagery in these paintings is heavily influenced by my ancestral roots in Natchez, Mississippi. I specifically draw from memoirs recounting the family fleeing during the [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"ngg_post_thumbnail":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[108],"class_list":["post-10184","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","category-available","tag-108","entry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.noahsaterstrom.com\/workaday\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10184","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.noahsaterstrom.com\/workaday\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.noahsaterstrom.com\/workaday\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.noahsaterstrom.com\/workaday\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.noahsaterstrom.com\/workaday\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=10184"}],"version-history":[{"count":10,"href":"https:\/\/www.noahsaterstrom.com\/workaday\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10184\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":10283,"href":"https:\/\/www.noahsaterstrom.com\/workaday\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10184\/revisions\/10283"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.noahsaterstrom.com\/workaday\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=10184"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.noahsaterstrom.com\/workaday\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=10184"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.noahsaterstrom.com\/workaday\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=10184"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}