This fall, I had the incredible opportunity to study art abroad in Florence, Italy. I took an immersive oil painting course which culminated in a final exhibition of five works, titled "Windows and Mirrors." My accompanying artist statement follows:
By having a window into nature, inner beauty is reflected. In this series of work, titled “Windows and Mirrors,” I am interested in connecting people to the wild possibility of finding beauty in modern times. I reacquaint the viewer with the value of the natural world by mirroring personal and nostalgic experiences in nature from the past. I have always been struck by the magical qualities of light and color: how light can refract on surfaces and reveal new facets of the form to the human eye. Light can distort what is real, but I think what is mirrored in nature is what is true.
To deal with the modern world, contemporary art is often weird or repulsive or what some would generally classify as ugly. I don’t see the world this way, but I also don’t see the world through rose-tinted glasses. In “Windows and Mirrors,” I portray underlying beauty by looking at scenes from strange, intimate perspectives that insert the viewer into nature. By compositionally cutting the trees at waist-height in the series’ capstone piece, “Silver Birches,” those who view the painting become one with the silver birches. In the arch and coastal scenes, the viewer is in a state of hovering vertigo, teetering over the edge of the cliffs. While beauty is sometimes fleeting, its presence is everywhere.
“Windows and Mirrors” calls for a reckoning with nature and simultaneously a reckoning with oneself. I reflect bright tones, complementary colors and loose brush strokes upon the viewer’s interior so that they can see themselves in a new light. In simple terms, the color is the form is the tree is the viewer is beauty. Abstract when close, my work achieves a resounding resonance and feeling of calm when you step back. I catch the viewer in this highly personal space between falling apart and coming together to span the gap between viewer and nature at the atmospheric scale.
