Cristina Vergano
In the Nature of Things (Simia Pelagi) (detail), 2001, oil on panel, 28" x 56" (triptych, open), Private Collection, USA
My paintings hark back to a time before the Industrial Age; when geography still held unknowns, archeology was not a science, and science itself was struggling to find order in an overbearing nature which held more ominous questions than answers.
I portray those offspring of evolution, which could have been but never came to be, or have developed, but died never being witnessed by humans.
Knowledge and our approaches to it are the subjects of my paintings. The cartouche held by the hybrid being in the central panel of the triptych bears a quote from Virgil's Georgics: "Felix qui potuit rerum cognoscere causas," (happy is he who knows the causes of things). The similar scroll in the right panel reads "Certum est qui impossible est," (it is certain because it is impossible—Tertullian). The bird in the left panel holds a cartouche which reads "Damnant quod non intellegunt," (they condemn what they do not understand—Anon).
The Latin quotations reflect the three basic attitudes toward knowledge: belief by faith, knowledge based on rationality, and blind rejection of what does not fit our parameters. Paradoxically, I embrace all of these.
