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Maureen Drdak |
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Search terms: painting, drawing, oil, acrylic, mixed media, charcoal, fantasy, abstract |
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Artist's StatementThe primary concern of my work is the visual expression of symbolic duality. Its meaningful synthesis is arguably the fundamental concern of philosophy and religion. Man’s understanding of his place within that search, and his struggle to integrate and visualize these dichotomies has preoccupied the artist from his earliest creative impulse. Ancient religion being the earliest form of psychology, and the Near East being the cultural matrix of the West, my interest has always returned to the artistic wealth of these lands and their seminal images. Within that world of images, symbolic prototypes and antitypes contain rich potentialities for expressive interpretation of dualities and polarities. Composite animal and human forms frequently embody small worlds of layered meaning that clearly speak to us in the present, revealing the shared inner vocabularies populated by archetypal forms whose antecedents draw us back into our primordial interior. Entering the new millennium, the West is once again reminded, unexpectedly and ambivalently, of the protean powers of this region. Unfamiliar energies and motivations are revisiting us like old recurring dreams, half-forgotten but uncomfortably familiar and persistent. We come from this place and it manifests itself in our present. Our spiritual families, the great monotheisms, come from here. Our psychic and cultural symbolisms come from here. My interest in these energies, and their psychological resonance in the contemporary psyche and religion, is the driving current in my work. I have an attraction to, and affinity for, the physical form. The animal body, in particular, has for me tremendous expressive vitality. Flesh, in all its forms and fragments, possesses universal expressive potential; it immediately contacts the viewer and resonates with his/her primary responses and feelings. I have restricted my chromatic palette to blacks, cadmium reds, and ivories with the maintenance of this goal in mind. This trinity of colors has multi-cultural symbolic significance, containing within it references to life and death, good and evil, engagement, protection, and transcendence. Contradistinction between extreme condensed detail and bold directional gestures; between transparent veils of pigment and rough, dense masses of crushed minerals and metal; between skeletal and flesh forms; between animal and human; all serve as analogies for the bridging and interplay between the atavistic and the abstract sublime. Two subjects are currently dominant in my paintings and drawings. One is the topic of the Votive. The sacrifice of the beloved son is the core foundational myth of Judaism, Christianity, and Islam. As such, it’s symbolism and psychic influence is an extremely powerful operative in the culture of the contemporary world occupied by these three religions. Though the Greeks addressed the theme through the Oedipus myth, the Abrahamic Sacrifice theologizes it and fixes it as point of spiritual aspiration. The inherent spiritual paradoxes of this paradigm reveal themselves today in increasingly problematic manifestations. Despite secular assumptions to the contrary, these religious energies remain the default psychic calibration of the majority of the world. The Akedah Triptych addresses this theme. The second concern is the aesthetic re-interpretation of the Assyrian Bas-reliefs of Ninevah. I have for decades been attracted to and fascinated by these works, which I have always regarded as products of genius. With the greatest pleasure I recently discovered the book The Forms of Violence, by Leo Bersani and Ulysse Dutoit of UC Berkeley. The authors postulate that contemporary cultural critics are mistaken in their view of these works as narrative in form; that to the contrary, they employ exceedingly sophisticated anti-narrative devices that prevent "terminal" reading of form, and maintain the constant visual "feed" of the viewer. My earliest attraction to these works was generated by this rapid-fire movement across the image plane coupled with their sensuality of form. Consequently, I was thrilled to see these works revealed for the "modern" works that I’ve always felt them to be. Contained within these works are extremities of motion and stasis, empathy and detachment, violence and pathos, and the sacred and profane. Exploration of these dualities is the subject of major works in progress, The Killing of Lions. It is my intention and my desire that the viewer experience these images as contemplative touchstones that access and amplify the "personal archaic" within. So that, as through the auspices of the Djinn in the remote places, the viewer is reintroduced to internal visions that speak to personal emotional and spiritual primacies. And that these visions be experienced and understood as alive and vital in the present. Selected Exhibitions:1991 - CPAS Exhibition, Moore College of Art,
Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, USA |
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