Mira ‘s Artsy News Notes: September 6, 2019
This painting is my way of trying to capture my current feelings about life- a combination of being caught and free, of being influenced, mentored and simultaneously standing alone.
I want to share with you a bit about my process and this painting, which has been occupying my attention since the beginning of 2019. It is a large canvas and spans a good chunk of my apartment studio wall.
I am writing about it precisely because it is difficult. The beauty of visual art is that the viewer brings her/his own impressions and response to the painting. I rarely try to express my art and my intention with words. But this painting is different for me. It originally began with the intention to express my personal philosophy within a familiar traditional format and method of rendering form. In the past, my approach to symbolic imagery was more literal, engaging portraiture and a sense of “cosmic space.” The first iteration of this work , buried under all these layers, was a portrait head and cascading roses in an atmospheric space.
I tried to make it work for several months, only to end covering up the whole painting about 3 times because I found it boring, unsatisfying and did not at all represent who I am right now. And I did not work on it with any regularity. I decided to let time assist me. It did.
Most of my visual art these days has been on the “ abstract spectrum”, rich layers of mark making and multiple media. This painting needed to be something different for me and I found working with a minimal palette, incorporating my propensity for linear mark making, loose grids, and creating multiple layers, each quite different in figuration, extremely appealing and intriguing to me.
In a sense this piece is a natural follow up to my large encaustic piece: Webbings and the Red Rectangle. and a couple of smaller encaustic pieces. I find the superimposition of defined geometric shapes upon more organic, gestural processes, very compelling. I do not know about future works; I just felt the need to talk about this one.
