The Lotus Eater essay written by Ashley Jones
Published originally in the Lotus Eater Book is this brilliant essay written by the incredible Ashley Jones. More of her work can be found here. The book can be purchased here.
The full excerpt below:
The Lotus Eater series is a concept - one exploring myth-making, wakefulness and sleep, nature and the universe, and the constantly shifting known and the unknown.
Thomas Flynn II has taken this concept, a thought still in formation, and made it material in the form of a painted series and poem, with the poem serving not as a translation of the paintings, but as another way of trying to complete a thought about connection. Connection between bodies and the cosmos (be they human or plant bodies) connections between wakefulness and sleep, sleep and death, and the mythmaking that seeks to explain it all in the face of information inaccessible to us in our waking states.
The colors in the Lotus Eater series are informed by the negatives. Negative space, contrasting color reminiscent of photographic negatives. This coloring, in addition to painted shadow in pieces like Dew Flowers and Midnight Sun, create a visual void, an intentional lack of information with specific effects on the perception of the viewer.
This creation of negatives brings a cohesion to the Lotus Eater series and to the series that preceded and inspired it, a journey through exploring myth, alchemy, unknowns, colour theory, and mortality in the face of a worldwide pandemic. This cohesion is both widespread and individual to the specific series, making seemingly unrelated images stunning potential companion pieces, such as I contain each and every star within my lips and within my kiss, and Our stars align once you close your eyes, both containing fragmented depictions of subject matter presented in deep purples, reds, and blues.
The use of primary colors is strong in this series of acrylic works, and while cosmic events serve as a sort of background to the figure of each painted plant or figure, the two seem to merge in pieces including The Lotus Eater, and Night Bloomer, where the form of the plants look to have moved beyond being influenced by cosmic events, instead becoming vividly colored cosmic events in themselves.
Inspirations set into the periphery but at the top of mind for the artist include Robert Mapplethorpe’s visual storytelling about human figures and floral forms, Flynn’s own knowledge about plantlife behavior, and varied cultural mythology including Egyptian - specifically the hieroglyph transmitted stories of Sekhmet, a goddess of both death and healing, Nuit the star-studded sky goddess also associated with death, rebirth and the afterlife, and Nefertem, the lotus headed god who represented both the first sunlight and the delightful smell of the Egyptian blue lotus flower.
The mythology of the lotus flower itself, and its association with lucid dreaming, also comes into play. These varied but connected sources of visual stimuli tell us stories about ritual and loss; the loss of information from a forgotten dream, the lost (or perhaps never held) knowledge about the connection between the cosmos, ourselves, and our planet, and the replacement of these things with man-made stories and stars. The Lotus Eater series itself continues this pattern, partaking in the recreation of the stars while sharing old myths in new ways.
The images in the series are talismans, the poem an incantation. Through engagement with the Lotus Eater series, viewers bear witness to and become a part of the ritual. The ritual of blooming, of sleep, of learning and forgetting.
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ASHLEY JONES is currently traveling throughout Latin America while writing and photographically documenting the faces and spaces around her. Her work explores various aspects of the arts, from painting, sculpture, and photography, to film making and music through commentary and collaboration. In addition to her commentary, her literary and prose works have been published and exhibited in spaces like the Venice Biennale (2019). She is a graduate of St. John’s University in New York, where she studied art, culture, and architecture in Rome, Paris, and Salamanca.