More Internality Exposed
“Celestial Decay,” a mixed media painting, grew from the phrase “in a similar vein” and contemplates the degradation of what it is to be human, what defines a body, and what determines the self.
The painting began with the idea of nature and the inherent repetitions of bodies and biological forms. Thus, I looked at nature's structures, repetitions, and rhythms, drawing on the imagery of a snail's palette, the cellular formations of cEDS, and the dynamic transformations between molten lava and solid rock, as well as cloud formations to create a more assertive basis for internal structure.
The body becomes oblique as layered rhythms, structures, and forms diffuse and complicate the biomorphic construction into a molten atmosphere. An imagined form of tissue, flesh, and veins become starry–nebulas and clouds conversing in celestial impossibility. Clouds become tissue that melds with biostructure, and vestibular constructions evolve and degenerate atmosphere and structure.
The winding composition reflects the inescapability of decay. A fact of biology, alongside a highly traditional, Florentine Renaissance-inspired palette, invokes the timeless memento mori contemplations of death, decay, pain, and endurance. As an artist diagnosed at age two with a genetic chronic medical condition, the inescapable realities of existing within an inherently broken, fundamentally faulted body incite my queries into longevity and decay. I face the ticking clock of my continually advancing condition and medical mysteries that science fails to answer for me. Thus, I turn to my imagination and nature–with its movements, cycles, simultaneous vulnerability and unfathomable power, and spiteful recourses in the face of humanity’s bold ignorance–for clarity. The dynamics between my artistic and personal visceral rumination regarding control, vulnerability, and agency over my corporeal form reflect a fundamental state of being. The self-awareness and fear I carry as I constantly engage my body, existing in a state of passive subjectivity to myself, waiting for the next shoe to drop, lends to my contemplations of agency.
Through the process of creation, superimposing structures, and rhythms layer by layer–utilizing thick gesso, screen printing, wax medium, and puff paint additive to produce textural, structural bases from which my compositions evolve–the form and atmosphere are continually defined and redefined by the materiality of my surface and layers and the piece carries the vestiges of a lengthy negotiation in a give-and-take of artistic control. The layering process reflects the radiant complexities of a corporeal form characterized by a connective tissue disorder.
Thereby, in engaging such a delicately visceral introspective expanse of atmospheric space in “celestial decay,” I seek to represent the all-consuming reality of living with chronic illness–reflecting how, for the diagnosed, it is a ceaseless subjectivity. The link between body and nature incites humans as equally subject to natural cycles and dynamics of power far beyond individual control, invoking the inescapability of decay and time.