Teddy Bears, Little Folk, & Aliens
Teddy Bears, Little Folk, & Aliens:
I like teddy bears—I remember drowning one at two or three years (1956-7), accidentally in a paddling pool—he was called Conks. Poor thing, went all brown afterwards, the sort of bear now worth money as a collectible on the Antiques Roadshow. Cuddly toy bears have layers of meaning. Hence my own childhood drowning memory and more recent experiences; Freud would suggest repressed memories, but I prefer the notion of teddy bears as Jungian archetypes who are evidence to the child of the Self in that they are projections of it. As well, safety or comfort is suggested by the fluffy form. Teddy bears mediate between the notion of scary places outside of the safety of home and the dangers outside of oneself.
These toys help us to construct meanings for our lives and may explain who we are. Children make quite spontaneous stories about their teddy bears as though they were a real part of our life’s journey. I made teddy bears out of rolled clay as an extension to the small figurines I was making towards the end of my pottery practice. Perhaps I needed comforting? As well, I taught children’s pottery classes over a number of years and they influenced me with reminding me of the innocent touch, that is, expressing an idea without adding all that art college learning to a thing—just let it be, stop needing to justify the subject matter.
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- 2006 small figurine 30 x 20 x 10 cm.
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- 2006 Acrylic on canvas 50 x 60 cm.
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- 2007, 30 x 32 x 12 cm.
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- 2008 small figurines around 30 cm high.
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- 2008
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- Work On Paper A2 gouache and ink on paper.
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- 2007, 26 x 24 x 12 cm hand-built clay sculpture
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- 2007 small hand-built fired clay sculpture 30 x 26 x 10 cm
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- 2006 small sculpture to 38 x 26 x 12 cm approx.
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- 2007, 32 x 27 x 12 cm hand-built clay sculptures used in painting of the lawyers.
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- 2007 Acrylic on a square canvas framed in the most elaborate gold frame 60 x 60 cm.
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- 2007 30 25 x 10 cm
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- 2006 figurines 65 x 24 x 20 cm
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- 2015 WOPA2 from my post on a portfolio.
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- 2006 small winged angel.
The following picture is out of my timeline journal I made for my sixtieth birthday, a way to come to terms with the aging process. If you look carefully you can just see Conks in the pool:
From my timeline journal made in 2014, when I was sixty.
Conks ‘drowned teddy’ is in the far corner under the diagonal of light.