Statement

Artist Statement

My art is an inquiry into the meaning(s) of spirituality with a special interest in the idea of personal transformation. I use both abstract and representational imagery, combining an image of the human form with color and pattern. It is a way to speak metaphorically about my experience of simultaneous physicality and non-physicality. I'm interested in the ways in which we negotiate these two aspects of our being.

I am very much inspired by language. I can be inspired by an overheard phrase, such as "...light as a feather now..." spoken by a yoga instructor, an entire poem, or a single word such as “presence." The root meanings and synonyms I find in my thesaurus act as a springboard for my imagination.

In the studio, I conceive of my working process as a kind of material transformation. By layering marks, colors and patterns the image changes and becomes new. Something is buried and something is revealed. The choices I make are largely intuitive. The actual physical contact I have with the work is important to me so I paint, draw, cut, puncture or stitch into my prints as way to add more layers. The painterly mark has a way of shaking up boundaries and definitions. I love to undermine the apparent authority of a photographic image with painterly marks. It’s a way to express what can be felt but not seen.

Still image from video. Painting on self and wall by Haran Kim, 2000.

melissa gill

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