The thesis is coming, The thesis is coming

I wanted to share my artist statement with you all. So, voila!

In landscapes the painter should give

the suggestion of a fairer creation than we know.

–Emerson

I am infatuated with flesh, and so I recreate it. I romanticize flesh, making new living versions of it, exploring all of its visceral splendor. The bodies that I envision in my paintings and drawings—like myself—are never satisfied in their current physical and emotional state, so they evolve. It is my greatest aesthetic desire to enliven these forms, and to depict them in their natural light.

I often lose myself in these new creations. I forget about the expectations and limitations associated with the body.  In my work I render flesh into amorphous figures—taking the shifting forms of hills, caverns, and streams—finally transforming the undesirable into the divine.  The morphing shapes portray the body as nature, creating a romance between the tender and the grotesque, the sacred and the sacrilegious.

Regenerate, for example, emphasizes the physical and emotional evolution of each form.  The multifarious body parts live in a confined space, simultaneously combining and counteracting as they strive to be independent of one another.  This painting, among others, speaks to my own dilemma about the complex—and ever-changing—nature of the body.

The thesis show is approaching fast. April 22nd! I am feeling much more confident than I was a couple of weeks ago. Once my work is officially finished, I will of course post the digital images here on the blog. They should be up in no more than two weeks.

Until Then,

Zoe