DROOPY HISTORY

‘Droopy history’ is a concept that lives in the imagined space between ‘human history’ and ‘natural history.’ Creating an isolated ‘human history,’ as to say our species deserves its own history separate from the rest of the planet/universe is an interesting concept. I think we are the only species on Earth to have done this. It is comical and self-­‐glorifying, but more importantly, it is completely unfounded. Everything we are, and everything we have done as a species, is directly and totally affected by natural history. This is because we are simply a part of natural history, which is the only history. To invent our own separate history, is to still tell the story of the world, but just foolishly and clumsily under an extreme humanist lens.

 In droopy history, we can explore alternatives: the idea of history as told by and for rocks, or plants, or worms or any other species living or dead, for example. We can allow for space and time lose their rules and become more fluid. We can even allow for mythology and science to become intertwined. These depictions of natural history are obviously heavily fantasized, but they do keep one leg grounded in the realm of science. It is important for this droopy history, no matter how altered it gets, to remain just the tiniest bit plausible (even if it is only in a strange pseudo-­‐ scientific realm of our universe). Droopy history functions in the same way science fiction can. It shows us a slightly (or drastically) shifted version of our world to which we can compare with our own reality. It is a framework to test possibilities within, and is itself an evolving universe in which my work can live.

Though the work arrives at a variety of forms, the process almost always begins by thinking through painting. I’ve often loosely attached the idea of wet paint to metaphors surrounding the life and evolution of species: the mixing of colours and emergence of new ones, all the slightly variations when two colours swirl together before they homogenize, the potential that wet paint can be used to make anything, the death associated with dried paint, what it means to paint over the dried paint. There is droopiness in wet paint when it is full of possibilities. It is similar to the possibilities of the first single celled organism, or the common mammal from which all others emerged. Dried paint and old collaged elements can reemerge like fossils and time travellers. When I’m making work and building this history, I feel there is a sort of safety in the word ‘droopy.’ It doesn’t have to be rigid. Droopy, to me, sounds like it has a sense of humour. It sounds playful in a way that I don’t hold it accountable to every rule. Ultimately, the idea of us speaking from any perspective other than human is impossible, and therefore it is useful that a droopy history doesn’t take itself completely seriously. Play is important here, and these hand-­‐ made, friendly, technicolor worlds suggest it.