Personal Folklore (Ode to R.F. Petersen)

Ink on paper. 2024

This piece is part of my self-exploration series, where I make work about my process.

This piece took several months to conceive, but only a few weeks to create. I was quite driven once I began.

Personal Folklore is abstractly depicting the visual representations of my internal mental maps - specifically concerning my work on folklore concerning my family (and self).

These 'maps' are a form of organising information, so that I can draw from various points of memory and ideas to create new work. I use color and form to memorize these 'pathways to memories', leaning on my synesthesia to do so.

Though my particular form of line-work was developed over the years through many influences and practice, my grandfather's work (Robert Francis Petersen 1926 - 2022) was incredibly pivotal. His mental illness kept him asleep much of his later life, and gave him strange and wild dreams. After WWII in which he served as a sailor, he went to the San Francisco Art Institute (as I did). Though he never publicly showed his work, he was good friends with many locally significant artists in the Bay Area, such as Michael Schwab. I inherited much of his work, and documented much of the rest recently after his passing.

I am in the process of creating a book of it. This piece was deeply inspired by his intricate doodles I watched him make for hours as a child.

Much love grandpa.