“I would go driving around in the New Mexico desert consoling myself by mindlessly picking up rocks and throwing them in my car. Later, unloading them in my studio, I had this moment of inspiration. They seemed so beautiful, I wanted to make them myself. I wanted to see how close I could come; that’s […]
Monday’s Muse: Vija Celmins
“I would go driving around in the New Mexico desert consoling myself by mindlessly picking up rocks and throwing them in my car. Later, unloading them in my studio, I had this moment of inspiration. They seemed so beautiful, I wanted to make them myself. I wanted to see how close I could come; that’s how the piece started. There was never any symbolism or any real idea. I just went back to looking, which I guess is a theme that runs through my work. Looking at stuff and sort of regenerating something in me that keeps wanting to live – something that sustains me that I’d forgotten about.”
“… I remember at the time that I had this feeling that no matter what I did, just to present the facts, there was still something in the work that was mine, that came through the making.”
— Vija Celmins, Latvian-American visual artist best known for photo-realistic paintings and drawings of natural environments and phenomena such as the ocean, spider webs, star fields, and rocks, commenting on her piece ‘To Fix the Image in Memory’, pictured above.
