In 1993 when my wife Cornelia and I lived in the Caribbean on the Island of Tortola in the British Virgin Islands. After I had begun the "Metonymic Artworks" in Switzerland shortly before. I did a series of Metonymic drawings in colored chalk on "found" locations and objects on the island. Paul Skelhorne, a Canadian journalist also living there and working for The BVI Beacon newspaper, took black and white photos; my wife took color photos. I used them as inspiration for other works for years. In addition to this, I painted many works on canvas and sail-canvas and had a show in the Brewers Bay (where we lived) Centre (and hurricane shelter). It was a very interesting year, and some great people.

Many of the other "Metonymic" artworks are presented individually on this website elsewhere.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Metonymic Artworks

Above is a visual diagram I used for speeches to show part of my process in the "Metonymic Artworks."

I became entranced with various tropes and how they could be used visually. The Chief one metonymy, under the inspiration from Daniel Ammann, my friend and a media theoretician and author.

What is the definition of metonymy?: A trope in which one word or phrase is substituted for another with which it is closely associated; describing something indirectly by referring to things around it or from the context. "The White House spoke of 77 injured soldiers."

To call this forth as a simple illustration in language, this mechanism could entail the replacement of "publishing" for "writing" or "filming" for "directing."

I used this visually. My works are almost always "context-specific." I would take an element of the context related to what I was interested in looking at closely, analyzing, in trendy-terminology now in interrogating. I would do drawings of that element. Then select a section of that (or several of those) and greatly enlarge it in a series of non-digital steps, so that it would also start to entail chaos mathematics and physics, i.e. start to have intriguing aspects of "breaking down." This I then painted or drew.

The diagram has no particular meaning, it is simply illustrational for explanatory purposes when I gave speeches on my art. You see a drawing of a woman model, a section selected, shading added, enlargement, and so on.