Spring 2017
I’ve been working with nature, still life and landscape as a subject matter, being rather faithful to the subject. Recently, I had a breakthrough, where I feel free to explore the rhythms and dynamic relationship between earth, water and sky, using abstraction, mixed media, irony and humor.
I enjoy a playful approach to artmaking. I like my work, though abstract, to maintain its sense of animation and relationship to cartoons. I am inspired by Jean Miquel Basquiat, Georgia O’Keeffe, Vassily Kandinsky, Cy Twombly, the Art of Shodo, Elizabeth Murray, and most recently, Looney Toons vintage cartoons.
I utilize a wide variety of different materials to explore my subjects including charcoals, sumi-E ink, India ink, Dr. Martin Inks, oil pastels, chalk pastels, water-based pastels, watercolor markers and watercolor crayons.
What intrigues me so about plants and flowers in particular, is the way they are involved in our rituals (like funerals, anniversaries and proms) but how they remain in our peripheral field of vision. I like to play around with vision and seeing various flat planes simultaneously, nodding to the Cubists. My work allows shapes and forms to collide and re-invent themselves according to one’s vision, as they move across, up, down and through the picture plane.
- Stephanie Rose Bird
