CORMAC McCARTHY, RETURNED FROM HELL
Ceramic Sculpture in three parts
Cormac McCarthy died on the 13th June 2023. In an interview he recorded at the Santa Fe institute (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HrUy1Vn2KdI&t=2305s), he discusses his essay, The Kekulé Problem: (https://nautil.us/the-kekul-problem-236574/). McCarthy’s Thesis is that our brains are constructed of various evolutionary components. Our conscious mind, how we present and communicate with others, uses language. Our unconscious mind, which operates continually beneath the surface, can use language, but prefers to work in pictures. This is because the unconscious evolved over a million years before language and he posits that it ‘distrusts’ language as a newcomer.
On morning in January 2024, I awoke from a night of turbulent dreams with the instruction that I must make a bust of Cormac McCarthy. I got out of bed at approximately 4am and began at the kitchen table.
