Margo Selski

I currently share my world with several dozen paintings, three university courses that I teach, three young children, and one husband.

I am kept running a path through my day. The way is patched with detours, but the perimeters are permanent. However, in the center of the labyrinth perches a blank canvas. It is my empty orchestra.

My work may seem to parody old masterpieces. I create a theatre and people it with an ornate cast: queens, mothers, children, predators, prey, florae, faunae. They live in airless, still places where each creature knows whom she should love or hate.

I wish they could be kept in these poses.

But then, the balances become uncertain. Relationships become inverted. Mothers become children. Children become empty eggs. Princesses become wolves. Eggs, children, families, all start to divide and become something unrecognizable. Soon, no one knows how they should think or feel. My sparkling utopia becomes unstable.

Yet still, the unbending wish for love, certainty, permanence. So I lift the brush again.

In this pose am I kept.