Temple's TangleWave Art Gallery: The Flowering of Narcissus

==The Flowering of Narcissus==

The Flowering of Narcissus depicts my interpretation of a mythological event. Rather than interpreting Narcissus as being only superficially "narcissistic," I interpret his self-obsession as a profound looking inward, leading perhaps to surprise but also terrifying and cathartic self knowledge, perhaps a basis for enlightenment. There may be some irony in this, like Atman facing Brahman. Whereas The Flowering of Narcissus attempts to enlarge upon a particular component of the collective subconscious, Memory attempts to present the process of memory itself as another means to enlarge, to pick and choose. Interpreting mythological images can make the historical and collective seem immediate and personal, while the fishing around in one's own memories, in many ways, seems to be a process of transforming the personal and immediate into the collective and historical. If I can find an overlap between my own experience and that of some dead poet, then haven't I, in a sense, enlarged my own experience? It doesn't seem possible for the individual to define herself without either positive or negative reference to the collective.

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