Breathing (city vs. country)

I wrote the following for an application to a residency in the French countryside.

I’m posting it because it expresses my current thoughts about where I am literally located, New York and also where I am in my artistic practice.

I am a painter, living in Manhattan, New York. The city that is famously stimulating and motivating but notoriously overwhelming. I am currently living in New York because I want the energy of the city to influence my work. Contemporary city society attacks our sensitive and vulnerable selves, forcing us to build shields of protection. I am interested in the complex nature of this challenge on the individual. How it creates an identity of superficial truth.

Here there is an obsession with the new and finding the unknown. People flock to New York to put a finger on the pulse, an ear to the ground. This is not a mental strain but an instinctual strain. Authentic engagement with a place comes from one’s presence in it. I trust my unconscious to be smarter than my thoughts, so I consciously place myself somewhere to soak up my surroundings, for better of for worse. My artwork deals with façade and how we present ourselves to the world in a physical, seeable way and also in a spiritual, invisible way. New York or any city, confronts us with a dualistic conflict of ourselves as vulnerable and powerful just by walking down the street.

But I crave time away from the ambitious speed. I crave long time for the freedom of long thoughts. Sometimes in the city the short spurts at which information flies at you causes a breakdown in personalized thought patterns. So consumed we are with catching the information which flies at us incessantly.  I need time to stop playing catch long enough so I can find time and build strength to throw the ball back.

At Camac I look forward to an opportunity to feel relief from the attack of the city. To look at my surroundings without feeling anyone looking back. The natural world is soothing in mysterious ways one cannot predict. I would like to visit Camac with the same method of conscious self-placement with the intention of receptivity to my surroundings. Safety is important in allowing oneself to be receptive. I find the natural world and a lower volume of humanity gives me this safety. At Camac I plan to listen beyond the ambitious NYC soundtrack.

My painting is concerned with the invisible and visible of an individual, particularly a female. In the city appearance is important and in an age of blogging and googling the image has taken an even more central place in how as individuals we navigate ourselves in the world. My previous painting series has dealt with issues of protection in the loosely archetypal guises a woman may choose to utilize, (femme fatale, pin-up grrrl, urban warrior, beauty/beast, #Goddess) within the idealizations found on glossy pages of contemporary fashion magazines.  I paint from fashion photography, reacting to the image with the subconscious-friendly practice of painting, which expresses my conflicting responses to a contemporary city climate.

Previously I have used the exterior as a vehicle to express the interior, now I am interested in using the interior to reveal the exterior. While still painting from fashion magazines I now allow myself to more freely extend beyond the reference material.  I view the Camac residency as a place where I can further explore the interior world because I will have less distraction from the external. I sometimes fear the sentimentality of visually tying nature to an interior landscape, but when I pair the natural world with the artificial world of fashion, seeking similarities and contrasts, I hope to go beyond the stereotype. I am still exploring female identity as seen and felt in contemporary society, though not limiting it to the stunted superficiality of fashion  seen only on the exterior. At Camac I want to allow nature and unseen magic to enter the equation.