C. Ellen Hart
Houston, TX
Artist's Statement:
I am exploring everyday imagery in my paintings. My sources are the ubiquitous patterns of shadow that we experience daily, but that we rarely stop to notice. I record source images photographically, in sketchbooks and sometimes by working with my painting support directly against the shadowed surface. Later in the studio I add and subtract from the sources distilling information into a new image.
I find my subjects cast on everywhere on interior and outdoor surfaces. Often we become blind to the ordinary. I want to examine things that are paradoxically commonplace and yet unseen.
Shadows both represent and misrepresent the nature of their sources. They are rough, distorted. They are natural abstractions. Webster defines shadow as “an imperfect imitation, a copy, a phantom or ghost.” Shadows show us something other than what we expect to see. This illusionistic phenomenon mirrors the nature of painting itself.
Shadows are studies in time, changing from moment to moment as light and atmospheric conditions shift. Other dictionary definitions of shadow include “a faint indication, a premonition,” (future) and “ a vestige, or remnant” (past). My challenge is to capture them in paint while maintaining their ephemeral natures.
These source images suggest the temporal and mysterious nature of being. In painting shadows I record a certain moment of light and darkness that is drawn both from the world and from my interior vision.
