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Richard Yarde
P.M./A.M.
Watercolor
90 x 90 inches
1999-2001
© 2001 Richard Yarde
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Richard Yarde
Richard Yarde’s masterful watercolor draws from esoteric traditions of North and South America, Africa, China, and India. The piece included in Visionary Anatomies, P.M./A.M., is one of nine large watercolors included in the original installation titled Ringshout. The title Ringshout is borrowed from the name given to a forbidden but healing religious ceremony performed by African Americans during the slave era. During the ceremony, worshipers danced in a counterclockwise direction around a central space to create a sense of spiritual transformation and community solidarity. The circular form of the painting, like the Ringshout ceremony itself, evokes the cycles of birth, life, death, and rebirth, while the open center of the painting represents the intersection of the physical and spiritual realms.
In addition to the African-American allusion, the circular shape of P.M./A.M. also refers to a twenty-four-hour biorhythmic chart of the time where, it is believed, the maximum flow of vital energy takes place in each internal organ. Yarde has reduced the color palette of his work to indigo and white, referring to the ancient cloth-dyeing traditions of Africa.
The coded messages in Yarde’s paintings are revealed through a combination of patterns identifiable as Braille, DNA patterns, X ray depictions, and ultrasound images. These patterns form a map that defines a personal system of communication. Through this unique system that alludes to historical and contemporary epistemologies, Yarde explores the interconnections between peoples and cultures, both ancient and new.
Work on this piece began while Yarde, who lives in Amherst, Massacusetts, was dealing with kidney failure. The scale of the work is drawn from the artist’s need to create something bigger than life and ultimately bigger than his own death, which seemed close at the time this piece was created.
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