ARTIST STATEMENT
My mixed media paintings / collages reflect my interest in the physicality of objects, their “thingness:” textures, shapes, colors. Regardless of the series, message, or symbolism, my work includes a variety of traditional media and found objects. In the tradition of Picasso’s collages and Duchamp’s found objects, the stuff of my art is likely to be “ropa usada” or other man-made discards or the discards of nature.
Other art history also influences my art:
• Renaissance linear perspective and the Renaissance concept of the picture plane as a window to the world with its perceived depth and space; and
• Baroque compositions that spill towards us from the picture plane.
The artworks that explore memories of the past use images of my family and images from my childhood: digitized photographs disassembled and reassembled into collages with mixed media.
The digitizing and collage processes are parallel to the memory process which allows me to duplicate and relive and reconstruct the past.
Neutral images from the past carry with them good or bad messages depending upon their interpretation in the present.
Some provide comfort.
Some provide closure.
© Ruth A. Keitz