Layers
Painting write up’s for ARC
My close friend Hali grew up going to “Fair”, as she called it, every Summer. Her aunt is a professional costume designer and longtime participant of the Sacramento Shakespeare Fair. They spend a week decked out in pounds of fabric and hoops and each character plays a part in the court of Queen Elizabeth.
I am intrigued by the crosspollination of cultures, of past as it collides with future. This ongoing evolution of costume and self-expression is visually engaging and gives the viewer a glimpse of story beyond the corsets and ruffles. The pieces of this costume are parts of Hali's wedding dress and a birthday dress made by her Aunt, layering petticoats, hoops, corset, overskirt and bodice and designed with a more Victorian era in mind.
Introspection
I lived in San Francisco for three years and realized that the city was full of fascinating subcultures. This painting is a blended image of events I’ve attended, and costumes made and borrowed over the years. Are costumes permission or escape? Is the self hidden, or is it a truth revealed? I suppose that depends on the person. I suppose it’s shades of truth piled high in ringlets. I think it is easier for some people to inhabit multiple versions of self than others. I live in Montana as an artist, wife, mother of two, but at times I think: in another life I would have been….
This image is a version of my own whiskey eyed self, letting liquid gold make the wallpaper and the satin and the deep shadows all the more luscious and imagination inducing. All that is needed is old timey jazz playing and some dear friends to discuss art with, into the lit rings of our beverages.