Ruth Poor

Pas de Trois
oil on canvas
60 x 30 in.

The pervasiveness of western media can be seen in the largest constructs of American society down to simplest texts of children’s storybooks. The ideas plant themselves unconsciously, building specific foundations for thought and perceived boundaries or limitations. For those who live and participate in this environment, mimicking the media’s criticism and dissection of one another is practiced ritualistically – at times, this dissection turns upon us and we lose sight of ourselves as individual entities, and instead view ourselves as compilations or collages of self-identified habits. By converting this exchange into a microcosm of a ‘self,’ my work addresses ideas of conflict with one’s own body and internal processes. Acting as mirrors, the paintings reflect these conflicts, which range from cases of self-scrutiny to malfunctions of internal biological processes. In the creation of these images, the figure is often erased, leaving the remains of unidentifiable and innumerable human/animal remains. Other times, the body is left disfigured to fend for itself. These forms are placed in pre-constructed environments where they interact with their immediate surroundings and occasionally other ‘bodies’. In these paintings, the forms are placed specifically within geometric and structured environments as an idea of control, the control of the environment upon the forms and their reaction to them. The conditions constructed by these geometric means are done so because they are artificially crafted by human hands. Just like the illusory control seen in media/society, they are not naturally occurring constraints, they are ones that are invented and built by us.