cloud

cloud shape

paint stain in form of a pinup

legs (with grass skirt)

figures

"Zarah In A Tree," mixed media on paper, 2008

"Departure," oil on canvas, 2008

Cut-out Doll (reposted)

The cut-out doll has no reference to an associated environment. The body is lifted from the house and place of origins, place of upbringings. Therefore, the body becomes the dwelling point. The cut-out doll varies from the paperdoll, who has interchangeable bodies/outfits. Paperdolls are often packaged with a paper house and accompanying captions detailing the history of fashion and place in society. Cut-out dolls are used in ritual as offerings or as a representative of spirits. They are a source of shadows dancing against projecting lights. We can project ourselves onto the cut-out. We can play make believe that we are someone else when playing with the paperdolls who have a story based on an already existing identity from historic sources. We relate to them having dwellings and the universally human aspects of their stories and can also romanticize from the unfamiliar and with the dress-up. They are grounded in and play out a narrative. We identity with the cut-out because it is modeled after a body. It is laid bare before us as a free agent/shape. I imagine it could lift right off the walls and jitter around, limbs flailing in the wind.
"Paperdoll 1," 2007, mixed media on paper; "Dolls from Make it Not Suck site III," 2007; "Golden," 2010, Acrylic on doorCut-out dolls are nomadic. They have no fixed setting. They are ghosts with images that flicker on and off of their shape against walls. Others have histories laid out along the body and in their clothing but only if they are defined with such details by the creator. I think about the figures in my artwork and how many live on a white ground. I tried making a few cut-out dolls with this tendency in mind. Making them as intentional cut-outs, I pasted a few on a construction site. Now they have a reference point that is temporary -they may eventually be torn down or the paper may start to weather and decay. Their environment begins to shape what they will become. When the walls get torn down then they will have a story. My cut-outs have portrait faces and wear clothing so they already have a fixed identity. In a way they are closer to paperdolls but change according to their settings. I considered the setting I pasted them on as I created them so they are suited to their environment. They are not a blank playing field as the traditional cut-out doll who is set up for various projections. I can't help but think how much the blank cut-out is associated with it's maker and it's shape modeled after the body shows how much we long to create from our image. I'm attached to the dolls I pasted on the street and care for their longevity. I have created more that are stored away until I lose site of them. And only in safety is this possible to lose track. I bring them out when I find a place for them. It is most likely they’ll end up being pasted into new drawings.
My drawings on clothing tags (see earlier posts) follow the paperdoll in the simple figure on white ground. Clothing left behind is another presence. Dresses are cut-outs from a figure and when worn and discarded become remnants of that person. Clothing tags itemize this presence.

I grew up in impermanent settings -constantly moving with my family and changing schools. I am pretty restless as a result. My art does not reference a physical landscape. The grounds are imaginary and psychological. The marks and planes of colour originate and extend from the body and as I abstract from the body, I move the figure toward landscape compositions. Bodies leave a presence or trace on landscapes, evident in every apartment or house I've lived in. In my dreams, all the places I've encountered combine and then fall apart into one white plane. Right now I am craving interaction with real landscapes outside of the city's generic shapes and that longing is coming through in my artwork. The body now takes form out of lines and shapes referencing trees and water. I'm painting imaginary landscapes from my head where a figure resides as a cut-out without a solid face and the presence of the figure is suggested by the landscape. Head to feet caught in the teeth of the landscape.

The cut-out also references family histories from those who are nomadic and uprooted. Their identity becomes something new, that has to be created from the absence of permanent dwellings and coming into new places. The cut-out doll is easily portable without a house or accessories to carry around like the paperdoll sister.
Another tribute to those who have been lost to history: paper figurines standing in for spirits who cannot be named.

A History of Monsters

I have been gathering up my resources for another exhibit on monsters..."A History of Monsters" part II. The late writer Gilbert Bouchard was so supportive of the concept of the 2008 "A History of Monsters" exhibit, at ArtsHab One, that he offered to write a catalogue and letter of support if I were to continue with the idea. He said it is worth pursuing and he'd put the fire under me and the other artists in the exhibit to develop the project into a more focused, larger exhibit. He wrote us a great preview in the Edmonton Journal. 
I write this as my pledge to commit. I am pursuing other directions at the time but think about this discussion with Gilbert often.

Artist statement I wrote is posted here: click on the "History of Monsters" header

"A History of Monsters" poster designed by Jodi Tychkowsky
Image from "Harness," by Caitlin Sian Richards, 2008

The drawing on the poster came out of sandpapered marks on washes of rapid draw ink on poster paper. I am working on drawings using a similar technique on clayboard and scratchboards where I can build up layers of paint and then scrape away through the layers until an image emerges. I then work into the image and reduce the areas for a strong graphic image. 


I am going to enlarge these monstrous figures into a new series about chicks and their familiars, nudes with masks, and women wandering in transparent jellyfish, angelfish fin dresses. Some women are birds themselves, posing infront of a classical painting of the famly's pet hawk, and holding taxidermy blue jays. Other women lie infront of the doorway with opium seed dresses, foxgloves, and disperse into the ink spills and eroded surface. I want them to be as elegant and slink by the viewer as this women with the harness and her dog. I originally wanted to title the drawing "night watch" as she appears confident harnessing power over and from her familiar. We'll see what happens.

of hair and teeth

hey there spindly legged woman bundled up
caught inside stare snares,
lie sideways down on the ledge.
they'll all sit across from your perch,
some will find you beneath ridiculed skin,
and maybe someday you will look into a restorative portrait,
and speak through the layers of hairs concealing you neck to cheeks,
lips pulled back for fish hooked smile, as if this was a choice encounter.
we weren't so different at birth, now you hide hide away beneath downward eyes,
hair in your face and into your throat,
guarding nets against the pills that will suppress the stories to tell,
if such features are imbalance then we should be rolling off the hills,
look down when you live under the big sky.
live inside outside to outgrow the old self.

"Cinderblock Girl," 2007

mixed media on canvas

centre of the party

"Centre of the Party," 2008

you brought into focus an image
located inside you and your friends' place
the image connected to a scenario
where she could be toppled and then brought back into presentations.
a faint line lingers in the living room, slinking along the walls and bending around corners.
the line rests as an arch, suggesting the partial shape of her,
the one who was at the centre of the party.
if you could feel her she would be cold from the inside.
this is not her portrait -it traces back the footsteps and sequences without eyes or voice.
her image dispersed long ago into the early morning,
directed toward the rain against the windows,
traveled amongst the birds gathered outside whose wings follow the width of instinct.

                       "Crow," 2010

3 blue girls road trip

    "Three blue girls," 2010

we departed for the longest stretch of time when the sun sets at 11 and rises at 5. guaranteeing us that we would not sleep. I had a pet spider that could spin lace from the light on the walls. one of my travel companions had a blue complexion and elephant tusk growth from her face. the other companion got sidetracked when she stopped along the road to answer her phone.

she caught up with us. we'd been sitting still for so long we couldn't stop. on her off road travels, she came across a line of roosters perched along an outlining fence, with elvis arms pointing toward the sun. the sun beats down on us so that we become aware of our lifespan. we have alot of catching up to do.

off from the way

I have been gone for a very long time
 (I will not sing for you)

important lessons in interacting (the perils and rewards)

people don't have to wear masks when
seldom seen traits just rest behind outside faces

sometimes something would pass over him
he'd press down on his partner
and then he was back and making her coffee
like nothing happened
she ducked behind a silent complacency
made herself a mask from the foliage outside
extend her limbs into an emergency passage
escape on the branches

at night she'd turn the mask into prisms
and dissolve her face
in search of a new adventure

one time, her legs turned into bat wings
and she was reluctant to test fly
it was pretty awkward as you can imagine

stand under

knees soldiered up
and when you stand down
it'll be minutes before
you are someplace else

you are destined to stare up at the sun
the soldier will return

At Sea

This is how to remember her. She packed up all her belongings and discarded all of her writing. Her house was left immaculately clean. Purposeful for discovery. The earlier state was of visiting stacks of books and magazines, heaps of clothing, food remains. She held onto everything. Her toes gliding leave trails across the floor when she danced. Green shift dresses for nights in.  This is how to find her. 

It was in earlier discussions on the phone that we agreed not to leave ourselves behind. Recalling the tale of  The Little Mermaid and how she exchanged her voice for legs to roam the land, I always tried to understand why she decided to take flight. She does not find freedom overground and in the end she does not find love. Her body slow and awkward to catch up, she was always late. No voice to talk about who she was and who she thought she hoped she would become. Crushed under the rocks on the beach, she joins her sister as seafoam. Before the earth took on a solid form we were formless bodies comprised of heat, invisible, the substance air our appointed dwelling. Now we live inside. 

There comes a point where the body moves away from the emotional and physical imprints imposed on it through memory loops. Maybe she was searching for freedom of weightlessness, the freedom from gravity, freedom from identity, freedom from memory towards the eventual release from the boundaries that define the body. This body is no longer a physical bearer of memories and histories. If you could now see her as she truly is. 

animals in the form of spheres

Beach Bodies

The beach sanctions a space where we can show our skin,
take off our clothes and bathe in light.

It is a place of longing –closest to paradise

Dreaming up beaches in escape

There is a freedom in weightlessness wading into water

and turning primal in our surroundings.

Scrutinizing eyes pull us back

Beach bodies limited to mannequin-esque skins

of godlike proportions

Social spheres –the beach colony, holiday-framed

Watching yourself being watched

Galleries of worshiped flesh

and examples of bodies shamed

Take care,

sunset sunshine

Still holding onto the imagined place of obscurity

where intoxicated bodies move from one state of transience to the next

Permission to roam

Still self-aware

Morning Rain, 2010

Artist statement I wrote for a new series of paintings I am working on 

in response to the painting "Islands". 

drawing from life

Drawings from the annual Doctors and Derrières live model sessions held each year in Edmonton.

The live model sessions challenge me to draw what is in front of me and break out of habits and repetitions in the way I see and resolve a picture. It is important to return to life drawing. I can watch how the light falls on the body and each model brings their own approach to the sessions. It is just me with a pen and paper sketching the model in the present moment.  This is how I have been approaching my new work. Without a preplanned image, without expectations and filtered perceptions. It is honest and raw, even if searching with a pencil in the given moment. The final compositions will be resolved later. I discover the figure instead of inventing her,  just as I have not selected these models.

I look forward to these model sessions each year. It is an intimate experience in which someone puts trust in you and each model is unique. Each body has a history and a way they choose to stand before the artists. It is a positive, healthy view of the body and in many ways heals the accumulated anxieties within the skin because it reminds us that we all have bodies that are real and have histories on the skin and are beautiful for being here. The best results come from drawing what is in front of me instead of filling in spaces with what is familiar with my own body. I only work into the drawings when the model is present.

 

During the winter months, I set up a mirror where I could draw my own body by observation. The drawings are quick impressions and I wanted to capture dance-like gestures.

I also began a series of drawings on grey paper by candle light in front of the mirror. Others with my eyes closed. They are not so much observational but more about portraits looking inside. They are marks created from the body about the body.

These drawings are charged up and cathartic and the outcome not important. Repetitions of the same figure slowly breaks down. Similarly placed next to the person who needs to tell a story over and over because the memories from it keeps intruding the body and talking will help diminish it's presence and the need to revisit (among other reasons for sharing). But I did not create these with an audience and the self-editor is turned down. 

I had a mark making tool in one hand and an eraser in the other hand while I drew them and could not see where ink spills occurred. The erased marks leave a resonance of the things I had uncovered. The voices scatter into light created out of erased marks and traces of colour. This exercise is about letting go of stories. 

The act of drawing them every day was necessary and I would store them away only taking them out a couple months later. And on viewing them after some distance I want to cover up the noise and restore the mangled and tentative figures to a resolution. There is violence in the marks, where screaming faces, roosters with eye-feather wings, and carnivorous mermaids emerge. I put them up in my room wondering if they should be left unresolved. I'm reluctant to dictate what these emotional snapshots will become based on the associations I keep searching for while standing back in a new head space. Now I am conscious of how these would sit in front of an audience and rearrange them on the walls looking for patterns and balance. They are from the past but still cover every inch of space.