Artist’s Statement - Abstracts
These paintings are journeys of discovery; the process is a collaboration with the unconscious. I start with a gesture that feels like pure expression, like a word that is absolutely definite and yet without form. Stepping back from the painting, I consider my next contribution to the dialogue. I may simplify or organize what is already there, or I may introduce another statement. An additional statement creates another layer, and in eliding the two the painting unfolds in some way I could not have foreseen. In resolving these, I seek not just harmony, but also some feeling that resonates. I know that the painting is done when it stops calling to me, it feels settled, and it resonates with something inside me precisely.
This collaboration with the unconscious locates the work in the sacred province of Chaos, the irrational. To really see my work, one must slow down, be present, observe closely. Pentimenti, abrasions, and translucence allude to layers of reality and meaning, the passage of time, the decay and transformation of memory and substance. The accumulation of subterranean layers suggests the possibility of magic available to those who plumb their own and life’s depths.
These paintings point the way to healing. They deliberately bypass logic and linear thinking which can be barriers to apprehending the sacred. They are about passion and paradox, asserting the locus of Eros within the realm of the sacred. Manifestations of Eros, the life force, in art as in life, serve as means by which we not only inhabit our humanity more fully, but also connect with the infinite. Dancing on the edge of Eros, they seek to evoke what the poet Lorca called the Duende, the terrible celebratory embrace of the presence of death in life. Intended to be felt and contemplated, they encompass a full spectrum of paradox. When the paintings resonate exactly, they are like music, the vibration of the tiny strings of which we are made, of which everything is made.
Nelena Soro
Becket, Massachusetts, 2018
These paintings are journeys of discovery; the process is a collaboration with the unconscious. I start with a gesture that feels like pure expression, like a word that is absolutely definite and yet without form. Stepping back from the painting, I consider my next contribution to the dialogue. I may simplify or organize what is already there, or I may introduce another statement. An additional statement creates another layer, and in eliding the two the painting unfolds in some way I could not have foreseen. In resolving these, I seek not just harmony, but also some feeling that resonates. I know that the painting is done when it stops calling to me, it feels settled, and it resonates with something inside me precisely.
This collaboration with the unconscious locates the work in the sacred province of Chaos, the irrational. To really see my work, one must slow down, be present, observe closely. Pentimenti, abrasions, and translucence allude to layers of reality and meaning, the passage of time, the decay and transformation of memory and substance. The accumulation of subterranean layers suggests the possibility of magic available to those who plumb their own and life’s depths.
These paintings point the way to healing. They deliberately bypass logic and linear thinking which can be barriers to apprehending the sacred. They are about passion and paradox, asserting the locus of Eros within the realm of the sacred. Manifestations of Eros, the life force, in art as in life, serve as means by which we not only inhabit our humanity more fully, but also connect with the infinite. Dancing on the edge of Eros, they seek to evoke what the poet Lorca called the Duende, the terrible celebratory embrace of the presence of death in life. Intended to be felt and contemplated, they encompass a full spectrum of paradox. When the paintings resonate exactly, they are like music, the vibration of the tiny strings of which we are made, of which everything is made.
Nelena Soro
Becket, Massachusetts, 2018
