WE ARE ALL CRACKPOTS - 2022
“Six years ago, I started to paint pots and urns when my friend died.
I had at the time a reoccurring dream where I was seeking medical advice from the doctors after experiencing incredible stomach pain. In the dream, I visited a doctor and after the examination and x-ray, was told that a strange object was stuck in my stomach. It needed to be removed. They cut me open and extracted a beautiful urn, a container with my dead friend’s ashes.
These dreams made me think about pots and urns as the vessels that hold a human life; each of us, our ashes cradled in a unique container holding individual beliefs, dreams, and opinions. As I continued painting, I started to think about all living beings as vessels with distinctive contents. The pots and urns in my work came to symbolise human life.
Over time I began to see that the vessel could also be an object into which humans could place emotions, such as grief. My interests segued into making pots and weaving baskets. A new tradition emerged as I made a raffia basket in the week between Christmas and New Year. Now, every year, I ritually prepare a basket to mark the year’s end. The basket symbolises a place where I put away the past, creating space to welcome the new year.
This series, We Are All Crackpots was painted during the lockdowns of 2020.
My paintings are a reflection on the ‘monkey business’ of humankind and how things seem to have gone a bit ‘Mickey Mouse,’ in the cauldron of popular culture, opinions and virtue signalling.
We Are All Crackpots comments on our increasingly polarised society but ultimately seeks to celebrate that are all crackpots in our own way.”
- Cecilia Fogelberg, August 2022
I had at the time a reoccurring dream where I was seeking medical advice from the doctors after experiencing incredible stomach pain. In the dream, I visited a doctor and after the examination and x-ray, was told that a strange object was stuck in my stomach. It needed to be removed. They cut me open and extracted a beautiful urn, a container with my dead friend’s ashes.
These dreams made me think about pots and urns as the vessels that hold a human life; each of us, our ashes cradled in a unique container holding individual beliefs, dreams, and opinions. As I continued painting, I started to think about all living beings as vessels with distinctive contents. The pots and urns in my work came to symbolise human life.
Over time I began to see that the vessel could also be an object into which humans could place emotions, such as grief. My interests segued into making pots and weaving baskets. A new tradition emerged as I made a raffia basket in the week between Christmas and New Year. Now, every year, I ritually prepare a basket to mark the year’s end. The basket symbolises a place where I put away the past, creating space to welcome the new year.
This series, We Are All Crackpots was painted during the lockdowns of 2020.
My paintings are a reflection on the ‘monkey business’ of humankind and how things seem to have gone a bit ‘Mickey Mouse,’ in the cauldron of popular culture, opinions and virtue signalling.
We Are All Crackpots comments on our increasingly polarised society but ultimately seeks to celebrate that are all crackpots in our own way.”
- Cecilia Fogelberg, August 2022