Thought Structures

Halina Jaworski, 1991

I once thought of my works as interiors, as formulas of spiritual labyrinths; but then the very idea of thinking something into something else will make a metaphor of them, and the last thing I wanted them to be was the illustration of an idea.

I therefore describe no object and illustrate no subject. It is the very idea of thoughts, the structure of them, which is being rendered. In a way, the oldest, most archaic language before stories were invented, before myths, were these coded riddles which came to play the hero role. The temptation of meaning is there, and may even enrich the viewer, but the essence is not in the story, for the act of making images is contradictory; in essence one paints in order to show what cannot be seen.

It is for this reason that I am so attracted to the term labyrinth, because it represents this contradiction. The labyrinth conceals, while the picture, supposedly, reveals; yet this revelation is an illusion. It is about what is not there. The work is then a labyrinth by virtue of its qualities of evasion, concealment and deception, and it is in this aspect that one can relate my work back to my origin as a Jew. In my religion, the image is known to be lying, while the ultimate image is and remains the word. Indeed, in the early stages of my works, words appeared again and again as soldiers defending the picture from its own evils.

When I say that my works are "Thought Structures", renouncing both words and images, this also explains their seriality, for like thought, they are invented in a hall of mirrors where the idea is constantly reflected and repeated; a never-ending process in the long journey between their conception and their formulation. Each work is a part of a whole, and the whole desires an end, but will never find it. You may regard the constituent parts which dwell in each work as the words of an alphabet, the grammar of a story yet to be told in the Messianic days of the Second Coming. This may sound utopian; but then is this not the force behind each work of art?

I therefore put down the road stones, the letters and sentences of an impossible language, In my private life I collect stones and old books and ancient coins. This act of collection may parallel the collection of songs in my works. I don't analyse the song-thought; on this level, analysis is meaningless. From an art-historical perspective, my work relates to those movements such as Constructivism which realised the hazards of "Erscheinung" (Figuration) and by-passed it by annihilating symbols. One can never run away from the metaphor or the symbol, but the failure is worth the attempt, Sons of Adam that we are.

This Text is written by Halina Jaworski for the watercolors cycle “Thought Structures”, the
works were shown in 1991 at the Richard Demarco Gallery in Edinburgh and in 1992 at the Peacock Printmakers Gallery in Aberdeen.