Re: Surface

I am interested in the implications that painting can have on ideas of time and space.  Although presented to a viewer in a static, all-at-once viewed format, a painting has the ability to contain a multitude of layers and associations that can communicate ideas about time and space and our changing interpretations of each.  

What are some of the spatial aspects and suggestions of time?  And are there certain time signatures to different spaces?  These are some of the things I think about in making a painting.  My work explores the spatial contradictions and complexities that painting is able to present, which may invite the viewer to consider our perception of time.  Furthermore, I am also interested in paint’s ability to confuse ideas of time as it may take on various rhythms, assume different speeds, and all on the same surface complicate our perception of space.  Using these two ideas in tandem, I am interested in the loopholes of not-knowledge that a painting can create and the gaps between the things that we see as concrete. 

My paintings often deal with the way that time can feel, considering our mortality, or sometimes our impossible wishes for immortality.  I am interested in the stories we tell ourselves to abate these fears.  With these things in consideration, I am also interested in how fiction effects time and space.   Despite the heaviness of these ideas, the work can also be incredibly light and playful.  The paintings are not subject to mortal fears, and often times the paint itself seems to contain boundless energy.  The paint can take on a lightness that feels capable of changing into various forms and permutations with cartoon-esque immortality. 

While working on recent paintings, I have focused on and questioned ideas of re-birth and renewal, both genuine and misguided.  These paintings pay particular concentration on water, its cyclical and symbolic nature, and ideas surrounding baptisms and also drownings.  In these isolated images that keep any resolution at bay, some paintings present images of emergence, while in others, there remains a question as to whether or not a resurgence may or may not take place.

date:

May 3-31, 2014

artist:

Karen Seapker