Maps, by Phillip Hoyle

I like maps. They remind me of a map game we played at home when I was a kid. Mom would get out some old geography books and world atlases and hand them out to us older kids. Then she’d say, “Find the Europe map.” When we all had one she’d say, “Prague,” or “the Volga River.” She might say find the Asia map, and then call out, “The China Sea,” or “The Bay of Mandalay.” Her challenge for the South America map might be, “Asunción,” or “The Amazon River.” The first one to find the place—and show it to her—was the winner. The winner would then pick out the next place name, a river, city, country, sea, ocean, continent, and so forth. One of the special challenges of the game was that the maps were not the same, so a river might not be named in one of the books. I suppose it trained our pronunciation and our ears for the language suffixes that might indicate a location by country. The teacher in Mom created a number of these games for her children to play, but I especially liked the map game. 

Map-like Art Cards by Phillip Hoyle 2017
Migrating birds.

Now I paint on maps, print on maps, sometimes even write on maps. I collect them from brochure racks in tourist places and at rest stops along freeways. I tear them out of magazines and occasionally buy one at a convenience store. I look for them in antique shops and secondhand stores. I sometimes cover them with thinned gesso or acrylic paints to make a ground for a mixed media work. I splatter them, pattern them, block out spaces, or tear them in order to match some traveler’s dream. I print on them, draw on them, paint on them, glue other things on them and in so doing create places of memory or worlds of fantasy. Most of my map messages are personal, a few political. With these maps I travel, juxtaposing unusual images, feeding some internal need that is often unclear to me, the artist. I go to places in my art, places that feed me, soothe me, please me, challenge me. I often don’t even pause to look up the name of the place. I wonder what my mother would make of these map games I now play. But I know of all the unusual people I have befriended, she would be the most likely to understand.

© 20 March 2017

About the Author

Phillip Hoyle lives in Denver and spends his time writing, painting, and socializing. In general he keeps busy with groups of writers and artists. Following thirty-two years in church work and fifteen in a therapeutic massage practice, he now focuses on creating beauty. He volunteers at The Center leading the SAGE program “Telling Your Story.”

He also blogs at artandmorebyphilhoyle.blogspot.com