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Phil Douglis | all galleries >> Galleries >> Gallery Twenty Eight: Using symbols and metaphors to express meaning > Emergence, di Rosa Preserve, Napa Valley, California, 2007
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09-JUN-2007

Emergence, di Rosa Preserve, Napa Valley, California, 2007

This metal sculpture rises from a sea of grass, symbolically throwing off its chains. I brought the tree into the frame as well, symbolizing a new life. The artist who made the sculpture is expressing man’s need to be free. Rene di Rosa, who collected this work of art and mounted it outside on his vast estate, surrounded by nature, to enhance it’s meaning. I use a vantage point to stress its emergence from servitude and thereby emphasize the act of freedom. By backlighting the sculpture, I show less of it in order to say more. As an abstraction, the sculpture becomes more than a piece of metal. It becomes all of us.

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Phil Douglis22-Jul-2007 19:00
Thanks, Suwanee, for noting the symbolic role of darkness here. It refers, of course, to the hell of enslavement. That darkness does indeed draw the struggling figure down -- the chain, of course, is a big part of that downward pull. Yet the figure, as you note, fights to stay above it all. The tension crackling in the negative space between the branches and the arm, energizes that struggle.
Guest 22-Jul-2007 13:12
It is perfect Phil, this image. To me this image holds a very dramatic meaning. Everything in darkness is pushing and pulling him down to the bottom. From the branch on the top suppressing him down, to the the the shadow on the shrubs that is trying to weigh him down, but he's fighting to stay up above it all. Every element in this image flows together so beautifully....
Phil Douglis02-Jul-2007 19:52
Thanks, Tim, for linking this image to the shot you made of this sculpture juxtaposed against the tail of a peacock athttp://www.pbase.com/mityam/image/81417703 . The sculpture is agressive in your image, and exultant in mine. Same subject, yet we each find different vantage points that create entirely different contexts.
Tim May02-Jul-2007 18:32
Again, we use similar subjects to make different statements. You have created a wonderful sense of escaping enslavement. While my image, http://www.pbase.com/mityam/image/81417703 seems to have a sense of the forces of evil attacking beauty.
Phil Douglis26-Jun-2007 22:04
You are right, Aloha -- the figure represents mankind. For as long as we have been on the planet, human beings have been subjugated by other human beings. Institutions, govermments, religions, predjudice, ignorance and fear have divided, conquered and enslaved people -- if not in fact, certainly in spirit. This work of art expresses the basic human desire --and right-- to be free, and I have tried to stress that message by making it rise out of the earth itself.
Aloha Diao Lavina26-Jun-2007 00:59
Caught my eye right away. There is nothing more I can add to this wonderful, inspiring image. Yes, it is all of us.
Phil Douglis25-Jun-2007 17:55
Thanks for picking up that bird, Sam. I had not noticed it before. You are right -- once we see it, that small bird can add still another symbol of freedom to this image.
Sam Bliss25-Jun-2007 17:46
There seems to be several symbols of freedom - the sculpture and the bird between the statue and tree.
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