"Shalom, Aloha"Mixed Media on Paper
38" x 48"
In progress
After my first residency in Boston, I began challenging myself to really open up my experience of mark making. I am working on pushing beyond the space where the surface feels comfortable to me, and asking myself to continue. I am also exploring color choices that are not intuitive, and looking around me for the pallete configurations that make up my world. Paint chips from the hardware store, interior decorating source material, popular magazines. Might these sources suggest color combinations that speak directly to what I am working on? For instance, in this piece, "Shalom, Aloha", I am considering my expectations of what "Home" looks and feels like. The pallete that I chose came directly from interior color design samples taken from the Lowes paint department. I then used these same samples as collage elements. Artists that I looked at prior to starting this piece that inspired some of the surface experimentation were Mary Heilmann and Jacqueline Humphreys. I have also enjoyed the work of Thomas Eggerer lately, and am asking myself how the ground and the figure both reject and support each other in my work. How can I push the dynamics of that relationship further to express the figures ease or complexity in relationship to their world, or the body as home? In this piece specifically, how does the figure relate to it's chosen "home"? What do you surround yourself with? Reach for? Walk away from? What defines and divides us? Also within this piece, I return to my life long fascination with text and image. Shalom Aloha. Peace and Love. Ideas of home. Release. The gesture as an archer taking aim, a dancer telling her story, a figure in motion - leaving, arriving. Where do our "Homes" really begin and end? Who do we invite in? This work is still in process. I am collaging old dress patterns from my sewing days into the surface. A pattern for life, a replica of our shadows, or silhouette. The lines that shape our coverings. What do we cover? What do we reveal? The exploration continues.
Ooh I love the idea of using paint samples to create palette rules. I hope you don't mind if I steal that. :-) I have this art paper in a zillion colors that people in color classes use (you've probably heard of it already) Lemme see if I can get the name.. hold on.. Ok, I can't find it, but you can choose colors from that.. That's what I'm thinkin'. Yay!
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