Thesis presentation

Friday I presented my thesis. Here's my artist statement and exhibition. It's been an exciting semester and an exhausting project, but extremely rewarding. I've used minerals as abstract forms of portraiture. My mother is represented by Wulfenite, I'm represented by rhodochrosite, and my brother is represented by malachite. My combined relationships are represented by botryoidal hematite. Enjoy.

In my art I am examining my relationships with my brother and my mother. I am examining how the event of my mother’s stroke when I was eight affected those relationships and my childhood. I am also looking at how the stroke led to a period of difficulty between my brother and me. I am deconstructing what made those relationships fall apart and the superficiality of memory.

Just as memory is inconsistent and augmented by time, so too is my usage of different media. I alternate between oil paints, and different printmaking technique, and canvas and different base materials. This constant change allows me to concentrate on each piece and what it means to the overall narrative and personal mythology that I’ve created. Likewise the different techniques require different amounts of time to make, referring to how understanding develops at different rates.

I use a combination of collage and a time line based presentation style to allow for continued interpretation of the subject matter. Each piece leads in some way to another and inspires another, but in what ways it is not immediately apparent.