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Cassandra
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Artist Statement: My paintings reflect a combination of ideas: the materiality of paint and how the
viewer perceives the surface, the history of painting as a medium, abstraction,
representation, memory, technology, and optimism.
The work is executed on aluminum panels using high-gloss commercial enamels
that enhance the liquid qualities of the paint. The liquid state of paint is more
evident with enamel paint because when it's dry, the traced contours of the
image I am painting remain. This quality gives a transitory effect to the piece,
as if the image is still forming. In addition, I reduce the image to its basic seven
or eight colors in an effort to abstract it further. This shift in presentation that
occurs between what the actual found image was and what it becomes painted
mirrors the way in which our memory recalls personal experiences. I then build
up paint onto a stripped-down form so that the painting vacillates between the
vagueness of the original image and the specificity caused by the physicality of
the paint itself. The gloss enamel is not only a signifier for the material nature
of the paint, it is also the vehicle in which the form is represented.
Subject matter for my paintings is taken from the media, found family photographs,
or my own set-up photographs. These photographs are then reinterpreted
through the computer. By using the photograph as a referent, I am challenging
its autonomy. All of my paintings reflect color choices that are made through the
computer. This not only affords me the flexibility of an immediate response to
what I am seeing, it also leads to the possibility of unlimited color combinations
through the computer color chart. The reliability of the computer in calculating
colors is central to the production of the work. Theoretically, the specificity of
color that is calculated by the computer is a stand-in for a human observation
of how color reacts with form. Digitized color is essentially the "pure" color of
an image as interpreted by the computer. I feel that colors filtered through this
process somehow relate more closely to the concept or reality of technology
infused with contemporary society. It is this reflection of a techno-society that
is expressed both metaphorically in the reflection off the enamel surface and in
the pureness of color that is filtered through the process of the digital.
The combination of processes in my practice is designed ultimately to feed and
create visual pleasure. My own pleasure in creating paintings is manifested in
the visual cues of the materials and content of each work. The directness of the
experience that one feels in front of a painting, from its object quality to its
materials and aesthetic, is unique to the medium. As a form of expression, I find
the process of painting challenging in regard to its theoretical considerations.
Why paint images from the media, memories, or photographs? It is the challenge
of balancing the medium and its history with technology that I find rewarding. |
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