I have no idea from whence this idea came. It felt as if it suddenly burst in my head while I was doing something else. Quite out of the blue I had a perception that there is an interesting artistic seam to be exploited dealing with the theme of ambiguity. Perhaps it has something to do with my recent preoccupation with images of the Green Man, which present us with figures who are simultaneously human and vegetable. Possibly the stimulus was a TV film we watched last night about the life of April Ashley, a famous pioneer of transexual identity. For whatever reason I began to scroll through the photographs of my own work, suspecting that lurking in there somewhere I might find several pictures in which ambiguity was a significant feature.
I was amazed by what I discovered there, and without any reference to the Green Man within a few minutes I had listed a couple of dozen pieces.* The triptych of bark studies which stands at the head of the blog is an obvious instance, but my earlier interest in masks is perhaps the most obvious case. What is going on here?
I’ve been ruminating on this theme all day, and to my further surprise realised that an earlier persisting interest of mine in mycology might fall under this heading also. After all, the status of fungi within the realm of nature has long been acknowledge to be a difficult question. “Plants” all operate with photosynthesis, which is not the case with fungi, so despite their sharing some attributes with the plant kingdom they don’t fit that category very well.
The more I think of it the more I am convinced that ambiguity is actually an important aspect of the world, and although it must annoy scientists, who are committed fundamentally to the idea an orderly universe that can be categorised in principle into classes and orders of phenomena, reality is not actually as tidy as they might like it. The human trait of toleration comes into its own in situations which are ambiguous, so that the ability to live with, and even to enjoy, ambiguity is vitally important. I think that I might stick with this one and see where it leads me.
*You can check this for yourself by having a browse through the “galleries” elsewhere on this website.