2021 Senior Exhibition: Elsewhere
"Take a Break" 10x10" Oil on panel, 2021
"The number you are trying to reach is no longer in service." 54x42" oil on canvas
"The Breakfast Nook" 13x24" oil on panel
"Dead Mall & Living Things" 42x54" oil on canvas.
"Study no. 2" 18x24" oil on panel.
"Mind the gap between the train and the platform edge". 54x42" Oil on canvas.
"Come Home."" 8x8" Oil on panel.
Artist Statement
This collection of works revolves around themes of reality and fantasy, tethering and escape. I think that the urge to abandon the real world exists in every mind to some capacity; for many of us, the world is too harsh, too gritty, too dangerous or emotionally exhausting and we desperately need to withdraw from the weight of living. For others, reality is mundane and we long for bigger adventures than we believe the world can provide.
At those times when I feel increasingly disinterested in reality, I find myself slowly drifting from ‘here’ into ‘elsewhere.’ I become preoccupied with the worlds of books, movies, or the places inside my own head. They provide the adventure and comfort that I have not found in reality. As if I live in a greenhouse world, I am protected from the elements and have space to live and grow in my own way.
But how long can we stay in our fantasies before the good is overgrown, and we are lost, consumed, or become so solidified in our dreams that the waking world dissolves? I want to invite the viewer to enter the world of each artwork as they might escape into their own fantasy realms; to feel the vastness and closeness of those spaces and to feel the tension between the materiality of the paint an the ethereality of the painted worlds. Through these artworks I reflect on that desire to be elsewhere and consider how to have a healthy relationship with reality: to take a break, but not forget to come home.