The legacy of life... More exploration of the medium

Thinking further about Anselm Kiefer's paintings in a deeper engagement with the mediums, I had the notion of how, on an everyday basis, we live our lives through a series of transactions with different objects, each time we touch an object we actually leave something of ourselves behind on it.  It's only comparatively recently, but this transference has begun to be analysed, particularly in the application of forensics and evidence gathering by law enforcement agencies, but I think there is a much wider exploration of this.

By engagement with the drawing and imitating the methods used by the Grand Masters, where I have been copying classical examples of their work, it sparked off this notion of the legacy, what they have left behind.  I was thinking about this as I was drawing one of my old faithful jumpers.  Everybody has favourite clothes.  They might not be the smartest, but for some peculiar reason only known to the wearer,  they bring a sense of comfort through becoming an enveloping embrace upon one's body.  This idea of an envelopment, like a child in their mother's arms, together with the notion of safety, a safe place to be in.  Regardless of whatever environment the outside world, might be throwing at you.
But not only the physical aspect of the wrapping and envelopment, but also a connection with memories, happy memories?  The combination of safety and happiness in wrapping the wearer.

Let us explore this a little deeper.  If you lose that favourite piece of clothing,  strangely, the response to it, is a sort of grief.  A sense of loss, a sense of losing all those memories and happy feelings, all wrapped up in an inanimate object.

But then again, let's go a little deeper still.  The notion of leaving something behind is a real rich source of enquiry.  The old coat thrown over the back of the chair, on the face of it can seem like something left behind.  It has a transient quality about it.  It is not going to remain there forever.  It has a temporal relationship with the world.

...Or does it?  I wanted to create something that appears permanent like a rock or stone, but even then, stone weathers and starts to disintegrate.  And where does this go?  It turns to dust.  it converts everything else that is organic, or even man-made.  Eventually, it all turns to dust.

The dust we leave behind on a daily basis is minute.  The tiniest shedding of skin, hair, saliva, and other detritus which all has a unique signature held within either its chemical composition, or as an organic form, its DNA.  This can be traced.  This can lead itself right back to you.  No matter how old it is.  It is your legacy.  Like the great masters who I started to imitate, their legacy is all recognisable as something that they have left behind.