BARBARA STRASEN
Artist Statement
I am a visual artist whose work is about finding beauty and harmony in the turbulence and complexity of apparently unrelated and contradictory images. My perennial focus is on finding unexpected visual connections between seemingly unlike images and ideas, and to discover new relationships between them. The sources of these images are wide-ranging, from the anthropology of nonwestern cultures to the biology of neural systems, and from natural history to cosmology and the Big Bang.
Every act of perception involves multiple levels of awareness: the perception itself, memories associated with the perception, and associations invoked by these perceptions. These perceptions and memories layer themselves in some form of priority, and do not remain constant but are the result of a continuing process of perception and re-perception, the mind constantly trying to reconcile the sublime with the horrific, the trivial with the vital.
My art deals with this by using successive layers of imagery, both visual and physical. I have always been driven to make art that comments upon and re-presents these ideas, seeking to reveal the interconnectedness of all things.
Over time I have taken different approaches to manifesting this vision, pushing the boundaries of painting, photography and printmaking, and exploring other media to create multi-image works that reflect upon these layered complexities. My original artistic medium was painting, which has expanded to include digital artworks, installations, and lenticular works. The result has been a variety of work, from gallery-sized paintings, prints and singular artworks to huge installations for a building lobby and an airport terminal.
Every act of perception involves multiple levels of awareness: the perception itself, memories associated with the perception, and associations invoked by these perceptions. These perceptions and memories layer themselves in some form of priority, and do not remain constant but are the result of a continuing process of perception and re-perception, the mind constantly trying to reconcile the sublime with the horrific, the trivial with the vital.
My art deals with this by using successive layers of imagery, both visual and physical. I have always been driven to make art that comments upon and re-presents these ideas, seeking to reveal the interconnectedness of all things.
Over time I have taken different approaches to manifesting this vision, pushing the boundaries of painting, photography and printmaking, and exploring other media to create multi-image works that reflect upon these layered complexities. My original artistic medium was painting, which has expanded to include digital artworks, installations, and lenticular works. The result has been a variety of work, from gallery-sized paintings, prints and singular artworks to huge installations for a building lobby and an airport terminal.
