“I can visualize it as a smell, with a three-dimensional quality, a thickness beyond its actual dimension, like a form of synesthesia. In think now looking back, my experience encountering this rug was the catalyst for becoming an artist and my profound interest in understanding the broader meaning imbedded in every experience.”
The green carpet serves as one of the artist’s earliest and strongest memories of home, his childhood bedroom. He considers rugs, this pattern in particular, as one of the most important and symbolic references in the work due to its immense emotional and psychic association. He says of the rug: “I can visualize it as a smell, with a three-dimensional quality, a thickness beyond its actual dimension, like a form of synesthesia. In think now looking back, my experience encountering this rug was the catalyst for becoming an artist and my profound interest in understanding the broader meaning imbedded in every experience.”
A notable characteristic of this work is the introduction of the color magenta, which is ironic in that the color was named after the ‘Battle of Magenta,’ fought between the French and Austrians in the mid-19th century. As a color, however, it is generally associated with forgiveness and kindness, tending towards light thoughts and emotions. The very color itself then is imbued with this notion of polarity, its namesake taken after a long and bloody battle yet its associations with something warm and positive.