April 11 - 15
Green
2021
oil and collage on canvas, 15" x 18"
photo credit Stephanie Manzi
"Scale"
2021
oil and oil stick on canvas, 24" x 20"
photo credit Stephanie Manzi
Artist Statement
As I paint, draw and collage, marks collide into bands of color and form that map, frame, measure, separate and merge disparate elements. Information is revealed and concealed into new configurations through processed based systems of repetition and recycling. In the studio, I grapple with concepts of landscape in relation to painting and eco-theory through environmental interaction. Within landscape and ecology, deeply imposed structures around nature create distance between ourselves and our understanding of the natural world. Painting can mirror the same distancing. It creates a window, an object, and conceptually separate pictorial space that can feel detached from the viewers reality. Therefore, the experience of painting and conversations within ecology are similar; both beautiful complex, dark and concerning, hopeful and light. My work straddles similar contradictions: permission and limitation, play and serious inquiry, accumulation and loss, structure and the unbound.
As a painter, I exist in both worlds. I have no direct solutions, only recorded personal observations of my environments. My hope is that as the work continues to develop, my interest with the intersection of painting and ecology can create a space of conversation, joy, connection and inquiry.