Artist's Statement
| JODIE LAWRENCE | ||||
Artist's Statement |
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Examining
modern notions of 'home', and our relationships to the spaces that we inhabit,
are at the forefront
of my working philosophy. Central to these concerns are questions of a metaphysical
nature, manifesting themselves in my preoccupation with notions of the 'sublime'
and the 'beautiful' and their relationship to the history of painting as
a medium.
I
am documenting a presence, or lack thereof, in the prosaic spaces I have moved
between in recent years, employing household items such as light bulbs, candles,
dirty windows and reflective elements. Works are simply titled from the streets
in which the residences are found, some in England and others in the USA.
These
works act as records of solitary moments experienced within structures that
I have encountered or occupied over time.
Working primarily from photographs of old apartment buildings; the interest
for me lies in what remains after human occupants have left. By creating paintings
in this way, I attempt to remove the viewer from the situation by creating a
sublime world that runs parallel to our own, where shadows and reflections can
exist without the comfort of knowing who (or what) created them. Painting in
itself is a medium that references the human body, and it is the medium that
takes the viewer beyond the purely visual and into a metaphysical realm. It
is this expression of Freudian 'uncanniness' that through working with images
in the medium of painting is manifest. I for many years have been captivated
by this.