Wednesday, October 16, 2013
Wednesday, October 9, 2013
Edited Artist Statement
October 9, 2013
Death is nothing new to me. After I lost my uncle last year to cancer, I was plunged back into the dark abyss of what it meant to lose someone you love, something so essential and vital in your life that you're lost and have got to find a new way of living. Memories of losing my father to cancer as a child flew back and opened up old woulds and new questions about my humanity and the connection that I had with my loved ones who were gone. I have found myself time and again in an emotional fragile state in a cruel game of "believe it or not," pulled back and forth between being told my loved ones are dying and that they are not.
My abstract portraits of the human body became a process of healing, through which I became entranced by the distinct lines and shadows and creases and folds and the sensuality and life that they evoked. The emotional substance of the portraits become the heart of the work itself, expressed through its blend of colors and shadows, blurring the lines between what is known and what is not. My design process is an exploration of the ephemeral effects stitching has on my compositions, portraying the complex, delicate and sometimes invisible connections that hold our personal relationships together. Conveying a celebration of life and combining the papery thin fragility of its stature, my pieces transcend between concepts of life and death, the beautiful and grotesque and the mystery that lies behind the relationship between my pain at the loss of people I love and my celebration of living and those who have lived.
Death is nothing new to me. After I lost my uncle last year to cancer, I was plunged back into the dark abyss of what it meant to lose someone you love, something so essential and vital in your life that you're lost and have got to find a new way of living. Memories of losing my father to cancer as a child flew back and opened up old woulds and new questions about my humanity and the connection that I had with my loved ones who were gone. I have found myself time and again in an emotional fragile state in a cruel game of "believe it or not," pulled back and forth between being told my loved ones are dying and that they are not.
My abstract portraits of the human body became a process of healing, through which I became entranced by the distinct lines and shadows and creases and folds and the sensuality and life that they evoked. The emotional substance of the portraits become the heart of the work itself, expressed through its blend of colors and shadows, blurring the lines between what is known and what is not. My design process is an exploration of the ephemeral effects stitching has on my compositions, portraying the complex, delicate and sometimes invisible connections that hold our personal relationships together. Conveying a celebration of life and combining the papery thin fragility of its stature, my pieces transcend between concepts of life and death, the beautiful and grotesque and the mystery that lies behind the relationship between my pain at the loss of people I love and my celebration of living and those who have lived.
Over the past couple of weeks I have been working exclusively with the matte gel and I am really happy with the results. The rough texture and crinkly surface of the material provides beauty and ugliness at the same time. It provides a sense of volume that the luster gel's smooth surface lacks...Since my last posts, I have explored two different forms of presentation other than the pedestal. I created a collage of larger prints sewn together which I tacked to the wall and am in the process of creating a three-dimensional piece by using clear fishing line to hang my smaller compositions from above to create the illusion that they are floating. I have inspiration to make this into a much larger instillation but am still debating about the details...a curtain effect? something you can walk through? be surrounded by?
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