Artist's statement:

Threshold (1986, from the series "Temples and Tenements") was inspired by decaying temples in the South of India, particularly Kerala and Tamil Nahdu, which I explored during the winter of 1985-1986 while undertaking a residency and lecture tour sponsored by the British Council.

Temples and shrines overgrown by banyans, boarded up, blocked by vines and drowning in teeming jungle growth, were not only melancholy but also very poignant, in that they forbade entrance to worship. All architectural traditions pay attention in some way to entrances, but the threshold is particularly significant in Hindu vernacular traditions, where even the entrances to houses are marked by significant barriers, steps, niches for lights and decorative designs or painted signs of protection or good luck on door lintels. These mark the passage from the outside public place to the family privacy of internal spaces or celebrate the numenous functions of interior chambers for making presentations to the gods.

The drawings of this period used very fine ruled lines and wash, and were built up very slowly, with an emphasis on shafts of bright light and shadowy interior places. They were not directly drawn from architecture, but were imaginative constructs made to memorialise architectural spaces as metaphors of human experiences.

Deanna Petherbridge
May 3rd, 2010