Artists'
Statement
For
the last 25 years, much of our work has addressed issues of
female identity. In this latest entry to our metaphorical
diary, we ask, “What has become of me? What was I before?
What will be left of me?”
We
digitally transformed these images of women. The corrosive,
reductive manipulations we perform invoke the process of aging
and erosion. The figures reveal the transitory nature of the
physical and the spiritual power that remains.
The depiction of contemporary
figures in an historical format provokes an analysis of the
assumptions of how ideals of beauty are formed and viewed.
While we concur with the Greeks that beauty and wisdom, strength
and power emanate from a strong body, our expression of the
nude is re-formed by our own experience. Our aesthetic criteria
is that of 21st century women. These nudes are poised between
past and future, aware of existence in a continuum of time.
Mind and body indicate a process where one kind of perfection
continually transforms itself into another.
Using poses and gestures inspired
by classical sculpture and the work of Michaelangelo, we invoke
historical periods in which the artist expressed the divinity
of the soul manifest in the body. To contradict and transform
the traditional ideal, we replace the proportions of a maiden
with those of a matron. The figures are isolated and desexualized
in timeless mythological space. Through digital manipulation,
we render flesh as marble to stress the powerful contour of
the form. Further, we fragment the torsos to reference the
process of aging, loss of mobility and the physical and psychological
changes wrought by time. We encourage the viewer see a unique
human body, part of a continuum—-an exquisite receptacle
through which life flows.
The term wisdom postulates
a unique process that does not come from experience alone,
but from conscious thought and choice. In order to express
the formation of wisdom, we made portraits of friends who
have inspired us and whose strong presence demands respect.
Beauty is ethereal, strength is fleeting and thought is abstract,
but because these portraits conform to an iconic formality,
they exude the individual’s power and permanence. Walt
Whitman reminds us: “Old age superbly rising! Ineffable
grace of dying days.”
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