Everything, All at Once
To a visual artist, the world is an onslaught of uncensored or edited imagery. As multitasking has become a social norm, it isn’t abnormal to be partaking in multiple digital slide rooms, windows of social media, surfing the internet, editing my own photos, while simultaneously interacting in real-time with the people around me. I am jolted from one dimension to the next allowing no time for transition, resulting in a sort of brain fog. This onslaught of imagery might be compared to an auditory experience in a crowded room, whereby a person might simultaneously hear the radio playing The Immigrant Song at full volume, a fire siren approaching on the street, and a 2 year old child crying out “Momma” repeatedly between ear piercing cries.
In my new work, I use recycled imagery to construct new meanings and concepts. These severed fragments of images are altered and positioned in a way to create a new montage of meaning.
In selecting preexisting imagery based on tonal qualities and hues, which might depict turbulent waters or explosions in the sky, or a telling detail of an image that holds much of the image’s sentiment (hands folded or cutting and sewing), I can reconfigure the images to tell a different story. The pieces possess their own gravity, a sense of history and weight. In rendering them with oil paint, the imagery retains that history, but are unified through the medium.
A human figure is not only what is seen on the exterior, but the organs and veins and hair and blood, all at once. The subject matter for which I explore and meditate on are the passage from life to death, the marred, brutalized female body and the dissonance experienced as artist/mother/wife.
