Lori Field
Artist Statement
My mixed media drawings and paintings begin with preliminary collages used as sketches or references. The drawings, executed from these references, are stream of consciousness ‘outtakes’ from worlds depicted within the original collages, and they straddle a border between reality and dream, past life and present. The beings that continue to emerge evoke subliminal, mysterious worlds – planets of my own creation, demimondes peopled with anthropomorphic ‘angels with attitude’, accompanied by mutants, exhibitionists, seducers, chimeras……..and other intimate strangers.
Drawing is a passion, and I intend for the work to be drawing-based, concentrating on the use of non-traditional media and arcane materials, always submitting to an obsession with obsessiveness. The mediums can vary: some are colored pencil drawings on vintage slate chalk boards, others are meditatively drawn silverpoint renderings on gessoed paper. Yet materially, the goal is often to combine obsessive drawing with encaustic painting. Many works are mixed media paintings that incorporate my own colored pencil drawings on rice paper or hand-colored one of a kind prints with additional collage, thread, encaustic, beeswax, lace, charms, insect wings – whatever feels like inspiration.
I create human/animal hybrids who retain the physical characteristics of both. Having deciphered some of the imagery, the symbolism remains far more felt than understood, more disquieting than soothing. My hybrid creatures seem not entirely adapted to either their own environment or the human world. They are odd. Making primitive visual myths of their secret lives, I habitually portray the features of animals who don’t speak or cry out – rabbits, deer, giraffes, zebras and flying fish – as a way of emphasizing the hyperawareness that comes from listening intently, without speaking.
Awesome stuff. Love the first one.