Emerald and Orange Vinyl.
In a world orbited by two moons, lunar phases dance in tandem, tugging at the tides.
Beneath these amulets of light lies the landscape in which SAINTSENECA’s new album Highwalllow & Supermoon Songs came to be.
Bandleader Zac Little had been struggling, stalled out creatively and disconnected. Songwriting completely halted and depression took hold.
“Art is like my bicycle powered lightbulb - always pedaling away, pushing back the grey gloom. Sometimes the chain breaks. Music didn’t sound good. It freaked me out. I always had used creativity as a vehicle to metabolize my emotions and experiences - process, digest, and move forward. Now it wasn’t working. This world gets heavy. Everyone falls into the pit at some point. I got crushed under the weight of something I couldn’t sing myself out of.”
What’s an artist that doesn’t make art? He found himself asking:
“What if I don’t do the thing that I thought made me, me?”
While on a walk he found a pen tucked against the curb. It wasn’t special, yet he felt an invitation to pick it up. He took it home and set it to paper, surprised by its vibrant green offering.
“I loved the way it looked, the way it would glide when the ink flowed. It felt good to just let go.”
He began creating again in this spirit, painting monochrome rings expanding on the page like echoes.
“I was weaving a naive little matrix, painting not so much what a flower looks like but how it feels.”
They were contemplations unfurling in patterns and waves, no agenda, just delight in color upon color until an image appeared. At first it was fish, then fish gave way to flower heads.
The practice was healing, footholds on which to climb up. The paintings amassed into a small collection, enough for an art show he displayed at a hospital. The solo exhibition inspired Little to paint all of the album's artwork on the beautiful gatefold jacket.
“Joy and creativity loop back around… like lunar phases, hidden and then seen. Always felt.”
