Double Vision Confusion

Double Vision Confusion

Diptych
Gouache and acrylic on paper mounted on birch panels
12" h x 24" W
2012

The 6th from the series Red Bean Paste and Apple Pie.

Another piece about rice and wheat; the 1st piece was It's Complicated and can be seen here.

After I finished It's Complicated, I felt there was more to mine on that topic, partly because those grains are such a big and confusing part of our lives and also because I had so much fun painting the wheat fields and rice paddies.

A hole in the wall is a phrase that is often used to describe a small restaurant that might be easily missed but is quite good. It is also a phrase that often is used to describe an ethnic restaurant that is run by an immigrant family. These small restaurants are often our first exposures to another culture.

In a way, we're looking through these holes in walls for glimpses of far away lands and cultures. And it's a jungle out there!

Those are the ideas in this piece. The backgrounds of the two halves are based on two historical wallpaper patterns — the oak leaf pattern of William Morris and a chinoiserie palm tree pattern. The oak and the palm are trees often connected to wheat fields and rice paddies. The two holes in the walls turn into a pair of binoculars through which a hidden person gets glimpses of distant lands. But while she's looking at far away places, she misses the small critters that are near her — field mice and paddy frogs, two species that live in close proximity to our grains.

Here's how the piece started:

The background on the wheat panel and the wheat fields are going in:

I changed my mind about the storming sky in the wheat fields:

The field mice are in:

The frogs, rice paddies, and palms are mostly there:

The coconuts, the grain in the middle. I intended for the grain to bring to mind the 3rd eye. The circle in the middle is originally the focus knob on the binoculars (although quite enlarged), and I liked the idea of the connection between "focus" and the 3rd eye:

And here the grain is starting to take on a religious look. Not my intention, but it's interesting to me that the shape evokes the outline of the Virgin of Guadalupe. The cell structures look a bit like stain glass, too. Neither were intended, but I like the result:

The finished piece is the image at the top where the central medallion is more grounded.