Alexandra McGovern

The garden, enclosed and separate from the world provides a safe place for the children to be the creators of their own world. In the children’s fantasy and role-playing, archetypes collide and our culture’s legendary figures: cowboys, Indians, pirates, superheroes vie for power in epic battles between Good and Evil.

As we watch children testing out identities and pushing the limits of the real, it’s as if a mirror is held up to our own search for possibilities.  But as observers, the experience is tinged with nostalgia and a sense of lost innocence, whether imagined or real.

The desert series is titled Nature/Nurture. The southwestern landscape speaks to a romanticized past replete with heroism, wide open spaces and rugged individuals who triumphed over a majestic but often hostile environment.  The vestiges of that dominance over Nature can be seen in the intrusion of cables, poles and urbanization..

As the children create their imaginary characters the landscape becomes a prop in their game. It provides an evocative space in which to “explore” cultural archetypes of Manhood.

Nature/nurture then addresses the often uneasy relationship between the “natural” and the “cultural” both in the development of self -identity and in our relationship to the land.

These paintings brought to mind for me the similarities between children’s play and art making. Both exist in a space and time of fantasy, obey the self-imposed rules of the creator of the “game” and have no measurable effect or purpose outside of the creative realm. Yet both seem to be universal components of our understanding of our selves, both as individuals and as people in relationships of kinship and members of social groups

 Going into the water is a literal representation of going beneath the surface. The ocean imagery draws on cultural associations with the un-knowable, mysterious depths., life giving and life threatening.

In the Halloween paintings, the internal world of fantasy and fluid identity is played out in a public space. The costumed figures create an interruption in the otherwise seamless world of the real, inviting us to temporarily suspend disbelief.

Although not in the frame of the painting, the adult viewer is implied, introducing an element of performance.