Seeking the Spheres To connect them…
My current body of work explores portraiture and investigates how the traditional sense of creating a likeness can be reimagined. My intention is to find a place somewhere between finding form and losing form that captures the essence of the individual. I am interested in the dynamic push and pull between the exterior reality and the interior life.
The work intentionally appears to be under construction. There is a feeling of building blocks that have not yet fully come together, as if they are in motion. Large shapes and decisive line play with the concept that we are constantly evolving. In this way, my process becomes a metaphor for searching and becoming; what Whitman called “seeking the spheres to connect them”.
Using larger-than-life scale, bold line and haphazard shape, my materials-driven process seeks to combine a traditional sense of form and structure with an expressionistic sensibility. There is a constant adding and subtracting; constructing and deconstructing. Ripping, cutting, pasting, crumpling, pinning and mixing are all important tools in this endeavor. Actions lead to reactions and spark important poetic or philosophic associations. Thinking and not thinking, to paraphrase Suzuki Roshi.
I want you to feel first and see second. Glimpse something of the being below the surface; beyond gender, race, religion, social status and traditional ideas of beauty. This pursuit is what I find intriguing, confounding and complex. And it is why I find the human face endlessly inspiring.
Amy Ford