home • works in progress (2001-02) • final show (2002)
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Artist's Statement
In my work, I am interested in the combination of material and immaterial; the physicality of tar, canvas, paper and paint, and the emotionality of images, color and form. Associations of color and form, how they can be used as a communication of personal attachment and emotion, and the way that tension is created between images, forms, colors and materials, reside within my work. A personal attachment to the images, process, and materials used is vital in understanding the content of my paintings. I am attracted to the idea of a non-traditional sensibility, which relies on ideas inherent in Minimalism and Abstract Expressionism, a sensibility that is reliant on the repetition of form and the use of an abstract shape as radiating visual stimuli, attracting the viewer and holding their attention, while eliciting an emotional response.
Abstract Expressionism, a movement that typically involved the rapid application
of paint and other materials in an effort to show emotions gesturally and non-geometrically
can be characterized by the mark making, and movement created by the artist’s
hand. A process of throwing or dripping paint onto canvas and other surfaces
was important in the work to create a purely abstract image, which conveys an
emotional experience.
Minimalism, however, broke away from this tradition and encompasses the idea
of reducing a work of art to the minimum colors, values, lines, textures and
shapes in a clean, cold and manufactured appearance. The need to represent or
symbolize any other object became unnecessary, and the basic elements of visual
images and forms in and of themselves were a priority. Emotional content was
not a priority and an allusion to machine rather than a human touch was exemplified.
Two ways of incorporating imagery exist in my work. One is the inclusion of
childhood photographs, and the second is the use of drawings where objects are
redefined from their ordinary appearance to hold a specific meaning to me. Both
the childhood images and the drawings are extremely personalized and hold very
distinct emotions with them. By specifically collaging images into my paintings
that I have a personal connection with, I set the tone for each work.
My previous work ranged from realistic portraiture to photo collaged grids,
to the abstract paintings that were exhibited in the Works in Progress show
in the fall. Through a progression of abstracting everything to simplistic forms
and finding an obsessive need to form everything into a grid, I began to break
away from clean lines and patterns to work with more organic and non-objective
forms while still acknowledging the use of repetition of simple form as a means
of capturing the attention of the viewer. In opposition to the manner in which
canvas is traditionally stretched over a support, and with the intention of
creating a work that was more object-like than 2-dimensional illusion, I cut
strips of canvas and stapled them directly into the wall. Despite the objectness
of the painting, the works still retained a spatial illusion within which assorted
materials such as photos, paper, leaves, and pages from a book emerged. The
way I treated the canvas, the collaged items, and even the paint became more
of an assemblage of objects than a painterly construction. Each work reflected
an emotional state of mind, and the various meanings of each image or piece
of paper collaged in them went along with that particular mind frame.
An artist whose work resembles the sensibility with which my work can be associated
is Susan Rothenberg. A New Image painter, Rothenberg is known for work that
revived interest in figurative imagery in painting in the late 1970’s and
early 1980’s. New Image Painting is a movement which “successfully
reconciled a new impulse toward figuration and symbolic content with the lean
elegance of minimalist abstraction” (Auping, p.13). By combining minimalistic
ideas of form and a consciousness of mark making inherent in Abstract Expressionism,
Rothenberg constructs paintings, which embody a momentary experience. For her
painting is “an elemental reaction between the nervous system and the unconscious”
(Auping, p.21) and she often uses the contortion of a figure as a mirror of
her emotional state. Working on a monochromatic ground, figures emerge from
the space while maintaining the flatness of the canvas. By inserting recognizable
and symbolic imagery into the paintings, she places a specific meaning on the
works, and by having a psychological relationship with each object, she is placing
herself within them.
In her ten by ten foot piece titled Red Head, 1980, Rothenberg paints a huge
image of a head with a hand in front. Both shapes are drawn minimally as an
outline of the objects except where thick applications of paint are evident
from heavy brush strokes. In some areas, color peaks through the layers of paint.
The head and hand, painted red and black respectively, are disassociated in
space from a surrounding field of white. This juxtaposition evokes an emotional
atmosphere and emphasizes the importance of color. To Rothenberg, “color
is about memory, an accumulation of feelings that get unconsciously attached
to a certain color or hue” (Auping, p.30), and is often directly associated
with childhood experience.
By collaging images from childhood, I am placing myself within the paintings,
and connecting to a specific memory or feeling that is tied to these images.
Creating an image that the viewer can relate to while still being outside, and
manipulating materials to elicit an emotional response allows for many interpretations,
and involves the viewer on their own personal level. Like Rothenberg, whose
paintings are sometimes autobiographical, my works become embodiments of a specific
emotional experience of relating to the imagery and content in the paintings
while redefining that moment in material form. My work titled Weighing Darkness,
which is roughly a six foot square, has an image of a child in a sleeping bag
on the bottom right corner surrounded by a space full of shadows and forms painted
in oils and tar that envelop the figure. A relationship is formed between the
digital image and the forms depicted in tar and paint by separating the two,
so that both the memory of the image and the emotionality of the forms play
off of one another. A visible mark making instills motion or movement within
the work, and further establishes a highly emotional sensation.
Another quality I relate to in Rothenberg’s work is the spiritual quality
of the field or ground and the contrasting object or figure. An object has a
relationship with the space that it occupies, and in her works, there is a disconnected
or disassociated feeling which allows the objectification of both the tangible
surface of paint and the illusionary image to form a relationship. Therefore,
the object as being something that is both physical and tangible, and reproducible
in an illusionary or pictorial sense is something that directly relates to my
work. This sensibility of dealing with the figure and ground of a painting can
be found in Rothenberg’s work as well as two additional artists I have
found an affinity with, Donald Sultan and Terry Winters.
Donald Sultan works with alternative materials in a process of collaging images
and objects in his paintings taken from newspaper clippings and Polaroid’s.
Photographic images provide a reference of form, and Sultan has cluttered his
studio walls with countless images and photographs often reacting to forms working
in between pictures as well as within them. My attraction to this way of referencing
form leads me to work in a similar manner, collecting images and objects which
I draw relationships from both compositionally and contextually.
Sultan also repeatedly draws the same object in a series of studies, which allows
him to familiarize himself with the object and redefine it. My work references
specific objects, and I often collage drawings into my paintings. A redefined
object becomes personal in the fact that it is now seen through the eyes of
the artist, and can be manipulated to address specific intentions. I specifically
generalize forms to accentuate a quality of the object instead of depicting
them realistically. This way, I have control over the way that each object is
viewed contextually and the response that a viewer might have. By evoking a
strangeness about the object, the work places the viewer in a state of unfamiliarity
and familiarity at the same time through recognition of the form and the ambiguity
of the object.
Similarly, my work consistently follows two forms; object-oriented paintings
and paintings which incorporate space. Sultan’s still life/object-oriented
images, and spatially oriented images stress the importance of the opposing
forces of figure and space. In his work Black Egg and Three Lemons, 1985, a
silhouette of an egg and a lemon take up most of the composition which is an
eight foot square. Peeking out from behind the black forms are two lemons which
sit on a plate reaching the perimeter of the square, and the space surrounding
that is a roughly painted and carved field. The contrast of the dark forms and
the bright yellow creates a positive/negative effect, amplifying the shapes
and the difference in material.
It is important to me to be able to bring someone into a space, and then in
another work bring them outside of it by creating a tension between the materiality
of the work and the image within. For Sultan, the images are usually recognizable
pictures from newspapers or magazines which differs from my work because I use
pictures that are unfamiliar to the viewer, again making the work about my own
personal experiences.
As a means for objectifying the work, I stretch large canvases that are also
very thick and weighted and then collage, paint and apply tar to them to further
amplify the physical process of constructing an image. Tar was initially something
that I used as if it were paint; I was attracted to the visual quality that
it gave with it’s dark shiny layer, and also liked the fact that it was
something that is not intended to be an art material. By using tar as a medium,
it allows me to abandon any traditional sense of painting, much like Donald
Sultan who began as a painter working in the same manner as Jackson Pollock,
throwing latex paints and bits of wood or other materials onto a large canvas
(Neff, p.11). His works, like mine incorporate the emotion and personal involvement
of the artist while accentuating materiality and process. When juxtaposing objects
or figures that are bright and vibrantly colored to a thick dark layer of tar,
the tar gives the works a physicality and weight, creating a ground, which can
be considered both a hole and a volume at the same time.
Creating a viscous layer, the viewer is distanced further from the interiors
of the painting, and then drawn in with recognizable or symbolic imagery allusive
of specific objects or figures, and relationships of shape, color and pattern.
These relationships are specifically referring to Minimalism and the idea that
an abstract shape is a powerful way of communicating a visual idea. In Sultan’s
work, therefore, in addition to the abstract form or figure, the grid becomes
important in the construction of the paintings as a means of breaking up the
space and creating a feeling of repetition and further accentuating the physicality
of the structure. The collaged images in my paintings work in the same way,
and by tiling the photographs by using digital imaging techniques, the edges
are very visibly adhered to the surface of the canvas creating a grid and a
three-dimensional construction.
A materiality and tactile quality can be found within the work of Terry Winters,
who like Rothenberg and Sultan, comes out of an influence of Minimalism and
Abstract Expressionism and further explores the idea of a figure and ground.
Colony, 1983, shows a repeated form allusive to cellular organisms against a
muted gray background where the color of the objects gradually merges into the
field of gray. Objects within his paintings often emerge from the space and
become obliterated by it so there is a disjunction between the inner and outer
space in the painting. Winters often grinds his own pigments and makes his own
paints allowing him to become closer to the physical process of art making,
and like Rothenberg, acknowledges that painting is both a physical and mental
activity which is also very private. His work emphasizes the use of biomorphic
forms, which are elusive of cellular organisms or plant structures are non-specific,
and fictitious, not a depiction of an actual object. By creating ambiguous forms,
Winters suggests prior meaning while adapting a new one, allowing a familiarity
and strangeness within the work; mutating the visual perception of things. I
am most attracted to the relationship he has with the work, speaking to the
importance of gesture and the traces of the artist’s hand, and the “inescapable
consequence of mark making.” (Phillips, p. 15) I relate to the idea that
not everything can be intended, and that a state of mind can be projected on
the work changing its original meaning.
My work is about both the physical process and the mental or emotional state
of mind. The material: wood, canvas, paper, paint and tar, and the immaterial:
objects and figures in drawings and photographs, form a relationship in the
reconstruction of memory and sentimentality by reconstructing a state of mind.
The system of mark making and construction of forms mirrors an emotional state
of mind, one which is both attached to the subject and the object, the image
and the medium.
I work physically, combining materials that have weight and viscosity while
including personal imagery connecting to the emotionality of experience both
in creating the work, and in the relationship with the image. The content, although
personal to me, has a relationship with the viewer because it allows them to
make their own connection to the image. Forms are meant to evoke an emotional
response along with the images and colors within the works. Every image has
an emotional reaction, the emotional attachment between the pictures and myself,
and the connection formed between the work and the viewer are equally important.
Through a process of constructing objectified works and redefining images and
objects through a personal expression, I am also communicating with the viewer,
involving them in that momentary experience of reconstructing an image.
Works Cited:
Auping, Michael; Susan Rothenberg Paintings and Drawings,
Rizzoli International Publications, New York, NY; 1992
Holland, Beickert, Dana; Donald Sultan, In the Still Life Tradition,
Memphis Brooks Museum of Art, Memphis, TN; 1999
Neff, Terry A.; Donald Sultan,
Museum of Contemporary Art, Chicago, IL; 1987
Phillips, Lisa; Terry Winters,
Whitney Museum of American Art, New York, NY; 1991
home • works in progress (2001-02) • final show (2002)
Close Portfolio (and return to SMP index)