Artist Statement - BFA Thesis Show
I’m fascinated by a variety of mental and physical borders that we live with and the action of crossing over them. I think about mental borders such as between recorded and constructed memory; the borders between comfort and discomfort; and between stability and movement. I think about physical borders such as those between countries and between private and public space. I am interested in the moments of decision-making, contemplation, timing, hesitation, awaiting and action, related to the act of crossing over these borders.
In these paintings I want to investigate the border as the point where two different sides meet. I try to explore how the environment that we exist in shapes who we are; what happens with us when we cross over a border from one environment to another; and what happens with us when we don’t. I am curious about how this forms our identity and sense of home.
The border between domesticity and adventure is the most prominent one that I deal with. I have explored different ways of living in order to break free from my original comfort-zone and find a way of life that suits me. I discovered a longing to bring these experiences back to my original home. These paintings, based primarily on my own experiences of traveling, are full of restlessness, homesickness and curiosity meeting nostalgia and a sense of being at peace. In this body of work I deal equally as much with process as I do with concept. I am interested in the composition, movement and border-crossing that happens on a picture plane. I begin painting simple shapes of color, which become my point of departure. I then search for a place within this painting, related to the concept that I have in mind. This is a process of adding and subtracting paint on the board. I work with a variety of thickness and textures of paint layers and then scratch into these. These paintings usually consist of 3-4 layers of paint unevenly distributed across the picture plane. I do not know what a painting is going to look like when I begin, but I recognize it when I find it. This process is similar to the longing for an indistinct goal of a mental or physical journey. In my paintings this goal is often symbolized by the windows or open doors, where darkness obscures what is out there. I start with an idea and then let the process be part of finding the finished piece. I am not interested in depicting what a photograph would have recorded of the subject-matter in my work, but in what impact these situations and places had on me as a person. Memory is the reason to why I have different stages of paint layers come through into the finished piece. I value the process of searching because it is this experience that brings value to the resulting image.
I use a lot of symbolism in these paintings, such as the horse, standing for power, energy and adventure, and the dog, standing for domesticity, family and pack. The photo frames, the chairs, the pillows, blankets and rugs, all stand for home, comfort, belonging and settlement. These objects as well as my compositions and my pallet are inspired by what surrounded me in my childhood. The home in which I grew up has a large impact on my work and has become the strongest symbol of safety and comfort in my life, as I have moved away from it. My pallet is based on colors found in interiors in the 80’s and 90’ when I grew up.
My surfaces vary in size because I am interested in the idea of a whole being made up of diverse parts. I intend for the construction of my painting supports, such as the nail-heads on the boards, and the labels on the cigar boxes, to be visible because they function as a reference to packing constructions and shipping crates that carries both things and ideas over borders.
