I believe people have a desire for an exemplar. Our idols are partly strong, and partly weak, and they are detectably unstable. As a young woman growing up in a small religious town, I have a desire for something different. I am subjugated by old religious standards that have seeped into the present society in southern small town America. Growing up in this environment showed me a dichotomy of ideas that exist about the role of a woman. I question the idea that roles are even based on the gender, but social constructs used to organize the human race. I admire the people who embrace the ever-changing role of woman. My artwork gives an opinion on femininity, and conjures discussion about the female role. My artwork questions the idea of femininity and how it relates to rituals, ceremonies, and rites of passage. My artwork is a female opinion influenced by the traditions of religion, monarchy, and family ritual. My artwork embraces the use of symbolism, metaphor, illustration, and the narrative. As an artist I am accepting my attraction for visual excess. My work is decorative and uses religious imagery to explore the ever-present connection to ritual, tradition, and history. Much of my work involves patterning. Patterns are symbolic of the intertwined aspects of my life. I see a visual pattern in life connects me to my heredity, history, social constructs as laid out by society, spirituality, and religion. This also intertwines with my particular circumstance, and the influence of others around me. All of these things affect me, who I am, and the art that I make. By using imagery from art historical references, vintage books, magazines, newspapers, and photos I am exploring the values and traditions each image carries with it. My work is a constant process of research, experimentation, reproduction and change. I collect old photographs and imagery related to the sacred, the ideal, and the feminine. I explore and use the imagery as a way to give reverence to something of this world. I want to give new life to imagery that has been profanely discarded, or wrongfully embraced. The figurative, the decorative, and the dramatic attract me. My work is a constant process of appropriation and change, and strongly borrows from tradition. I paint because I believe traditions can change. Just as Daniel told Nebuchadnezzar, the clay feet of a giant idol makes it vulnerable, but it is still sacred to the masses. |
