The Earth Melts Away
2022 – 2024
Two-sided drawing: charcoal, burnt branches and sandpaper on paper.
Size variable

Finally, The Earth Melts Away is a semi-expressionistic drawing of two figures in a tangle of arms and legs fighting/wrestling/embracing/resting. An image signifying the mental grappling and internal battles faced by artists. Herein lies a certain tension specific to my own practice and temperament, a tension between control and surrender. As a head-strong choleric eager to get what I want through grit and persistence, I often tackle projects and ambitions headfirst. But I had a profound realisation when I discovered that the root word behind the words Resolve and Resolution lies not in the brute force of will and self-determination. 

“The Earth Melts Away examines this irresolution further. One wrestler has caught the other in a headlock. The caught wrester is running out of options: give up, try escape, or eventually pass out. Entombed in limbs, evocations of suffocation become their most direct. The thickened linework in front of the lifted background gives the impression that the figures are in a womb. 

The act of creation becomes more desperate. Capistrano utilises his most expressive linework to date. The choker looms like supernatural force over the choked, with the choker’s dusty face and robust limbs resembling an unformed golem. As the blood rushes to the highly rendered face of the choked figure, his hands loose feeling and remain underdrawn and weak. It is not certain that this is the end for the choked figure, but time is certainly running out. By capturing this moment, Capistrano leaves it open if he was triumphant in finding the elusive end of creation.”

Quotation from Daniel Press


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Two figures in a tangle of arms and legs fighting/wrestling/embracing/resting. 

In my own practice I oftentimes find myself navigating between two extremes: control vs surrender, abstraction vs figuration, overworking vs underworking, self-doubt vs clarity.

There is a hidden struggle at the core of each artist’s practice. An interior wrestling beneath the surface of the work. A playful dance. A subtle tension. A pulling back and forth of waves and currents, of untold memories of fears, doubts, hopes and affection.