Artists, and I include writers, argue that their art is in some ways reliant on these deep-seated memories that feed their vision and that it is their preference for art to tap them and represent them in an instinctual manner rather than a logical one. This tendency for artists to refuse to answer questions about symbolic arenas in their work is not an uncommon one. The arenas of terror he concedes do relate to experiences in childhood that he says he may remember in part but they are experiences that he has chosen not to deal with emotionally. It is his insight that strategies for wise repression is possible, and perhaps, even necessary for the painter who wishes to tap unconscious meaning in images which must be untainted by the categorizing power of words and rationalization.
These holes represent a place of terror, an opening into the unconscious where the painter prefers not to descend. In each of these paintings there is a hole dug into the earth. Perhaps another question that might draw out further interpretations of the art-is one that looks at the psychological dimension of the works. Is Forrest’s resultant painting therefore about Dali and Gala or do the images and implied narrative become a means for the painter to represent something other? The answer to this question might be sought in what Forrest has added to the environments of his paintings. However he noted with some mischievous intent that Dali’s experience of ‘the orange’ involved not only the delicious juices of the fruit but also the bitter taste of the peel (See fig.1). He did not hold back in his descriptions of their love drawing on the juices of the orange he held to represent the delectable nature of this coupling. The hotel owner, evidently attached to his role of narrator of a famous love affairr picked up an orange as he told his story using it as a metaphor of Dali’s relationship with Gala. Whether factual or not, the story told were drawn on in Forrest’s paintings. Visiting one of the hotels at Cadaquez Forrest was amazed to see the walls covered with original Dali drawings and paintings and he sought out the owner who rewarded his interest with stories involving the relationship Dali had with Gala. It would be biographical details about Dali’s life that would serve to provide Forrest with some of the images that he incorporated into his paintings. Forrest visited Cadaquéz, a village north of Barcelona, where the surrealist painter Salvador Dali lived and painted for most of his life. Both painters explore the unknowable terrains of solitude a well from which stories of loss and lurking unclaimed identities struggle for expression.įorrest’s paintings found their narrative in his visit to Spain. Matassoni renders the gleaming world of suburbia paying tribute as much to its beauty as its terror. Forrest visits a favorite place in Spain and in constructing that world in paint he also tells us another story that reflects earlier journeys in his psychological world. John Forrest and Terry Matassoni construct worlds that give us immediate access into places and environments that each knows well. Works by John Forrest and Terry Matassoni John Forrest and Terry Matassoniin Fiji at the Double Dialogues Conference hosted by the University of the South Pacific in conjunction with Deakin University. This essay was written in response to an exhibition of the works of Dr.
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