Groundswell MFA Thesis Exhibition
Groundswell is born out of a desire to deconstruct the traditional painting format and expand its presentation into installations and sculptures that re-frame historical art tropes such as odalisques, the connection between women and flowers, still lifes, landscapes, and decorative filigree. I remove my canvases from their wooden stretcher bars and cut, fold, drape, pin or sew them into undulating forms. As the paintings expand beyond their two-dimensional format, so do their framing devices. My inclination to work intuitively informs their evolution as I cull fragments of other art projects, augmenting them with hobbyist materials like glitter, diamond dots, craft paint, and plaster.
Central to my process is clay and its historical associations – particularly regarding porcelain objects of the 18th Century. Working between paint and clay has led me to contemplate the discussion of art versus craft among other social divisions within hierarchies in the art world.
Read the full thesis, Groundswell, here.
