Redefined

My life is just a little too exciting these days.  My mother is recovering from knee replacement surgery; we just heralded the arrival of our third  granddaughter; and, I'm packing works for my solo exhibition in Nova Scotia.  All of these events prompted me to think about how our lives are constantly being redefined by our life experiences.  Nothing ever stays the same and sometimes I wish it just would because change is difficult to accommodate when you are busy.

The focus of my newer Remnants paintings that I'm sending to the exhibition explore how time affects our perceptions  of events/objects related to them,  and how the objects themselves are redefined as time passes.  I've showed some of these paintings before but I'm reworking the ideas and compositions in several of them and I think the new attempts are much better than the first ones.  That is probably because I have a better feel for what I'm doing/saying in the work.  So the painting content and compositions are also being redefined!

Untitled  ( 2010) 16 x 16 in. Mixed media ( image transfers, acrylic paint, paper and mediums )

on canvas 

While I loved this work when I created it in 2010, the more I look at it the less successful it appears.  Now I see it as  a little static and contrived. Yes,  I did a great job of combining interior landscapes (wallpapers from old houses) with exterior ones (a family dory like the ones used in my childhood), but I am forcing the idea of landscape. It's difficult to decide if this is about the object (dory) or if is it about the landscape itself. There's also the female/male connections from my growing up.

  Redefined - Dory (2011) 16 x 16 in. Mixed media ( image transfers, acrylic paint, paper and mediums ) on canvas

This is one of the  new paintings included in the exhibition.   It is much more abstracted and collisional than the first one.  I love the parts that are totally abstract and the combination of real objects in decay within a dual environment -a collision of "male and female".  As usual my photography is lacking because it does not capture the layers of information that well.

If you have thoughts on these  two pieces and where I'm headed in my new work,  I'd love to hear them.