Previous Shows: 2013: States of Being: Mira Gerard
I grew up in an isolated religious community in rural New Hampshire. My experiences there in contrast to the world outside have shaped my work and the way that I understand myself in relation to everything. In part because of that experience, I am compelled by characters in literature whose subjectivity is described in a heightened visual way, usually through a significant encounter in the landscape.
Color and light is important, as is the physicality of the paint and the primary place that working with paint brings me to. My work is rooted in photographic and film-based source images, mostly from my own staged photo shoots. I take cues from cinema, fairy tales, and dreams to construct paintings that deal with conflicting fantasies of display and negation. I paint with a strong sense of atmosphere and space, feeling around inside the memory of the image/source as well as the layered emotions and associations it evokes in me.
