|
|
Julia Whitney Barnes
Page 1 | Biography
|
|
|
|
My recent work, which is rooted in science, yet also evokes the fantastical, depicts the fusion of bats and orchids. The Orchid-Bat series is inspired by the evolutionary ability of organisms to adapt to their environment. My long-term study of plants and animals expands my imagination in generating ideas for my work. The appeal to me of science is not in using hard facts to explain the world, but rather, that science provides a medium to pry open and reinterpret things. The two species transcend their existing boundaries, in a play on survival of the fittest, using mimetic adaptation to gain a new identity.
|
|
|
2.
|
The stimulus for the Orchid-Bat series originated from bats’ physical abilities to resemble the plants around them as a camouflage technique and from the way orchids can become more visually similar to the animals that eat their nectar in order to seduce them into pollinating.
|
|
|
My ideas take form in sculptural reliefs and oil paintings depicting beautifully visceral, unsettling entities, creating a tension between seductively blossoming creatures, primal sexuality and grotesqueness. These brightly colored works, which in many cases reference forms of the human anatomy, infuse the images with a dynamic energy on both formal and psychological levels. Through my work, I investigate my role as the artist as creator and Creation as metaphor.
This body of work aims to explore the heightened intensity of polymorphous sensation. I consider my work to be a form of postmodern mannerism, which combines perversity, acute exaggeration, compression of space, extreme color and metamorphosis. Through the creation of the Orchid-Bat hybrid, in which the impossible is achieved, I invite viewers to experience the highly charged states of fornication between plant and animal, sculptural and painted, rough and smooth, precious and feared, seductive and grotesque.
|
|
IMAGE DESCRIPTIONS: 1. Orchid-Bat (Tree of LIfe) 2006 glazed & goldplated earthenware on painted 14 X 10 foot rectangle
2. DETAIL Orchid-Bat (Tree of LIfe)
3. Orchid-Bat (violet) 2006 glazed earthenware 26 X 28 X 6"
|
3.
|
IMAGE DESCRIPTIONS: 4. Orchid-Bat (light) 2006 glazed earthenware 11 x 10 x 7"
5. Orchid-Bat (petals) 2005 glazed earthenware 26 X 23 X 4"
6. Orchid-Bat (red) 2006 oil on frosted plexiglass 19 X 13"
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
Design © re-title.com - Cloud Hosting by Hyve - Terms And Conditions - Artists - Exhibitors - Archive - Contact re-title.com
|