"Tűzhely" Painting

The word “tuzhely” is a Hugarian term which describes the place where a family would assemble at the end of the day. It can closely be translated as “the place where the fire burns”. The place where a fire is regularly lit is a traditionally considered sacred. A fire means warmth and wellbeing is is also used for, and it carries the promise of safety as it keeps wild animals away. It is the flickering light of hope is a sea of darkness. This sacred fire used to be kept burning all night and day long by one of family members. I have chosen my own Hungarian family illustrate this concept – “Tuzhely” is the warmth and the sense of familiar wonder which weaves these destinies together. Everyone’s childhood is a time essential to the way they shape and tell story later on. I started to develop the idea of “tuzhely” as the subject of a painting after some of my close family members had passed away. I was also somewhat influenced by Hokusai’s work “Making a Pact with the Spirits of Disease.” In a way, trough my work I am trying to preserve the memory of a few individuals which used to function as a unit, different generations joined together by something as humble and as grand as fire: both an inner and an outer fire. My mother is a part of a generation which lived through communism as a young adult – and I chose to present her with her hands crossed, static, closed. We, her children, were the first generation to benefit from being born into democracy and a free world. The characters in my painting have blurred or undistinc eyes in order to further support the idea of “tuzhely”, in which the individual is subordinated to the symbol of the family unit : they are a chimera, a thing of wonder, memory preserves them as a warm myth.