Landscapes of the Extended Field
Exhibition dates: November 3 - 10, 2022
Closing reception: Thursday, November 10th, 6:00 - 8:00 p.m.
Fort Fisher Maritime Oak Forest, Wallpaper and Grass Cloth Collage, 2022
Fort Fisher Beach Jetty, Wallpaper and Grass Cloth Collage, 2022
Triple Fall, the top two tiers, Wallpaper and Grass Cloth Collage, 2022
Artist Statement
My current body of work consists of collaged landscapes that reflect how natural environments have influenced my way of seeing the world. These landscapes range from the estuarine and rural environments endemic to the coastal Carolinas to the mountainous parts of the state. I am instilled with great appreciation for all of these places.
Figurative elements in my work include flora and fauna from the regions and objects that show personal interaction with these environments. I often create work that observes the rural domain as a sort of fray of human life where things become considered banal, camp, or of the past. I look to various groups of artists for inspiration, from American folk artists and self-taught artists to modernist and post-pop landscape painters, as well as contemporary collagists. Painterly examples of these artists include Charles E. Birchfield, Henri Rousseau, and David Hockney. These are visionary painters that wish to extract a spiritual essence of landscapes. These artists are known to make their work from intuitive and design-oriented decisions. Other artists such as marquetrist Alison Elizabeth Taylor and collagist Njideka Akunyili Crosby have inspired my materials-based approach.
The compositions of my work are based on photographs I have taken, which I then project to make sketches on panelsdmintz. My sketches capture the reduced color shape relationships in the image. From there, I use the collage process to build layers over the sketch to emphasize textural vibrancy. My practice is hugely materials-driven, specifically materials that have aesthetically influenced me from a young age. These materials include wood, leather, wallpaper, and paint. Wallpaper, and its history, are at the core of my undergraduate research. One of my main goals is to unify these materials which stimulate a unique visual tactility. I posit in my research that visual tactility is one of our most innate abilities to sense the world around us.