sarah kramer smpsmp 2009
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Artist Statement

My art is the visual equivalent of a moody jam session - it is an impulsive process of materializing the inner workings of the troubled mind. I aim to create dreamlike spaces which expose our fascination with intricate worlds of tension, suffering, solitude, desperation, obsession, fear, and confusion. Bizarre mutations and seamless combinations of highly charged objects, textures, and body parts create a space that is both intriguing and challenging. By liberally manipulating these elements, I create a bewildering environment in which the viewer is forced to look closer, but likely finds no real resolve. The pictorial elements are never completely at rest, thus they can be approached time and time again by the same individual and constantly understood in a slightly different manner. It is only with the accumulation of time that these figures and objects begin to emerge and relationships between them become increasingly viable.

As I view my work at various stages I find most intriguing my ability to continually establish new relationships within these unnatural, and yet so seemingly tangible, environments. This desire to find reasonable explanations for why different figures or objects are brought together is characteristic of my response to symbolist and surrealist work. There are a multitude of interpretations which can be derived from an image like Odilon Redon’s, The Spirit of the Forest, which portrays a man with the body of a skeleton and tree branches emerging from his head. Why is he part skeleton and part tree? What does that make us think of? There is no one answer.

More important to me than just creating disorienting and slightly disturbing worlds to be figured out, however, is my desire to make these worlds places you feel you could almost touch - places you want to touch. Like the work of Cecily Brown, I want there to be a formal rhythm and complexity which demands closer scrutiny, combined with content which - upon its gradual realization - evokes unease and even repulsion. My work is meant to possess a sense of being hidden despite the fact that it is right before your eyes.

The sense of transition which is such a key aspect of the form, content, and even process of my work is made possible by my use of charcoal. Because charcoal can be picked up just as easily as it is put down, commitment is strictly a matter of choice. It can be pushed around, built up, left packed up in a line, smoothed out into a soft gradation…no mark is permanent. Even after it is “fixed” half of it can be blown off of the page. This can be frustrating, but the material allows for an incredible amount of flexibility.

I have the freedom to work from other artist’s compositions, putting the darks down on the paper and carefully preserving the lights, but can at any moment diverge from that artist’s work and impose my own visions onto the page. I have the freedom to respond to the many chords, lyrics, and sound effects of music. I can build up the blackest black on the page, and then decide that I would like for something to emerge from that blackness. Through careful manipulation, I get to see objects and textures begin to surface from nothing. I can make images which are completely unnatural but still seem tangible. I can test the limits of objects, stretching them until they are almost illegible. To put this all simply, I have the freedom to respond and therefore the freedom to change direction if I begin losing interest in the piece. My work is a hybrid manifestation of my responses - both physical and mental - to music, photographs, objects, people, my previous artworks, and the artworks of others.