Holding seconds

20 August – 17 Sept 2022
Atelier Studio Gallery

Works from this exhibtion available through Atelier Gallery and on Artsy starting August 19, 2022

Artist Statement

The past two years have been an exercise in reevaluating perspectives – on life, on work, on time, on relationships – but mostly on ourselves. Throughout the shifting patterns of lockdowns, releases, and quarantines, normal everyday surroundings and relationships began to change. The simplest of daily ritual such as going to work or school changed, overlayed with a new context. How we related to others was a roller coaster of solidarity and suspicion. And how we responded in our own lives was a complex web of fear and hope, grief and relief.

What emerged as most interesting to me as an artist was how we discreetly shifted our categorization of time and priority. We’ve all seen the memes poking fun at how long 2020 felt – days felt like weeks and weeks felt like years. The changed context of our behaviors effected the experience of the passage of time; which in turn effected our relationships with our surroundings. Things of high priority pre-pandenmic find themselves cast aside in a world of social distancing, while rarely-noticed elements floated to the top.

In this body of work I sought to capture small increments of these complex moments. These paintings explore the overlapping of self and society, the small daily interactions against the backdrop of the chaotic world stage. As the viewer engages in each painting she will begin to see the scratches coming in and out of focus defining foundational forms obscured by upper layers. Type and line murmur in the background of the final form creating surface tension and texture. The color will begin to bloom and shift as the foremost hues radiate the lower layers of color and transparency. Each painting is the complexity of a single object or moment and all it’s history rendered in paint and line and form. Each layer is a view of that moment from a different perspective – physical, emotional, spiritual, chronological. The resulting paintings range in their movement and tone just as the days and moments do. Sometimes concrete forms can be seen, usually a common utilitarian unnoticed element, a cup or bottle. I find that in these seemingly insignificant items that clutter our homes, I am reminded most strongly of the sacred and holy in the very tiniest of our actions. How we interact with the least of things speaks to the priorities of our hearts. Each day, each hour, each second is a choice. A choice of from where we will set our perspective, what we want to draw to the surface, and what we want to shift to the background. Over the course of this series the viewer can see my shifting views as I wander between the more tangible and the more abstract context. Abstraction in my work is a vehicle of the spiritual, giving form to the unseen movements of our lives through pure color, line and form. In creating the final abstract layers of a piece I take what I consider foundational to living, our spiritual lives, and bring it to the forefront; flipping the current layers of living and the perspectives of priority upside down.