PARADISO
PARADISO: an exhibition by Madeline Morris, April 2018
Artist Statement:
In each of our lives, there are events and experiences that usher us into the presence of God-- moments of divine revelation that are translated through the aesthetic experience. C.S. Lewis describes a series of events in his young life in which “beauty” stirred in him a curiosity for God, and for heaven. In one formative event, Lewis was struck with the freshness and exuberance of nature when his brother presented him with the lid of a biscuit tin that had been filled with moss, twigs, and flowers. As he grew into a higher understanding of God, his imagination of heaven retained something of that toy garden. My work is an exploration of our worldly perception of the divine through revelation and our imagination of Paradiso.
The humble nature of clay allows itself to be the ideal material for expressing our earthly understanding of the transcendent. Combining man-made forms with nature is a theme in my work; we find our ability to be creative through our understanding of God’s creation. I have drawn inspiration from the site specific light sculptures of James Turrell, the handbuilt, textural style of ceramicist Sisse Lee, and from the grounded, yet ethereal work of Renée Frackiewicz. In Dante’s Divine Comedy, the protagonist must pass through Inferno and Purgatorio before ascending to Paradiso. In a similar way, we cannot grasp the concept of Paradise without first understanding the torment of hell and the seemingly endless waiting of purgatory.
“O grace abounding and allowing me to dare
to fix my gaze on the Eternal Light,
so deep my vision was consumed in it!
I saw how it contains within its depths
all things bound in a single book by love
of which creation is the scattered leaves:
how substance, accident, and their relation
were fused in such a way that what I now
describe is but a glimmer of that Light.”