Artist Statement

For my final painting project, I created a serious of abstraction of the four elements - earth, water, fire and air. Four 3x3 canvases explore the geometric and organic patterns existing in nature through both a micro and macro lens. I like to explore abstraction through organic elements in nature and it only felt appropriate to do so with the four elements. Although all natural materials, the patterns that exist combine both ambiguous lines, textures and shapes, and also very subtle geometric forms. My four pieces played along with the aspects of the abstract and the real, and the patterns that exist within that.

My exploration of air, water, fire and earth was fairly arbitrary, as those labels are extremely broad, and encompass the entire planet. As the possibility for me to properly display “earth”, with all of the opportunities that entails in one painting is fairly impossible. Each painting is an intimate moment with one small section of each element. An close up look at all four pieces that make up our world. My paintings allow a pause in time, bringing this vast elements down to something tangible, creating an intimate interaction with something so vast.

A huge inspiration for this piece was Georgia O’Keefe. I have always been drawn to her work and her painting style, as her subject matter, color palette, and painting style are things I also align myself with as an artist. O’Keefe’s landscape paintings play with the idea of the macro and micro, creating abstractions of deliberate locations and subjects, yet still are devoid of the details that create specificity. She is able to create landscapes that give the viewer the reference of some form of familiarity without creating a specific place - allowing each viewer to engage in an intimate moment with each painting. O’Keefe’s use of brush strokes are impeccable. The smooth blending along with minimal textured lines create amazing contrast and variance throughout all of ver landscapes. She is able to create a sense of calm, femininity, and natural beauty within all of her work. The aspects of her painting practice are the things I aimed to create in my final painting series - the ideas of intimate moments, landscape abstraction, and the room for interpretation involving the macro and the micro.