Robyn Thomas
All that we see is filtered through the lens of the verbal and non-verbal languages we carry with us. We are always describing what we see, either with our words or with our actions. The cultural component of language that fascinates me the most is that of history/memory. Our languages are formed by what we experience and remember as an individual as well as the experience and memory of the groups of which we are a part. Visually I attempt to work this concept into my paintings through the use of layering, creating a sense of simultaneity and making reference to a great history within the artwork. Everything that exists is created out of layers. The whole is created from individual layers.
A metaphor I like to use is the biological, the cellular structure of living things. This is the common denominator of humankind. At times I have represented various cells in my visual language in an attempt to explore the layers of communication occurring within our own bodies just as the layers are communicating within a painting. Other times I have used the grid upon which information flows and structure, or better order, is maintained or disrupted.
However I do not wish to reduce the paintings to purely philosophical excavations into language and physiology no more than I wish them to be taken as pure non-objective designs which could appear in the next contemporary home furnishings catalogue. Formal and technical aspects in regards to contrasting glazes, intensity, density and transparency of color in my work are meant to enhance the metaphor of the biological and language/history/memory while creating an aesthetically positive experience for the viewer. The positive experience must not be a pleasant picture, but it should leave the viewer with a sense of possibility for the history and memory that will be.
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