Spirit and Matter

For my senior body of work, I incorporate the emotional and spiritual qualities you experience within nature combined with the tangible material elements of nature to create abstracted compositions. I identify with Mondrian’s theory of spirit and matter that has directed me to develop a method of structuring horizontal and vertical bands of color to express the harmony I feel while immersed in the outdoors. Not just the physical beauty of nature but also its all-consuming spirit overwhelms me. Within my abstracted compositions I represent spirit with the application of vertical line, and horizontal line representing matter. By spirit, I mean the energy and emotion one feels from different elements in nature. By matter, I mean the tangible elements within nature. In my paintings, I think of paint as an ingredient to express the spiritual qualities of nature's spirit. It can be applied densely or be thinned to the point of becoming ephemeral. Matter is the collage paper that is tangible and that grounds the composition. The textural print of the collage paper adds to the grounding of forms in the composition and represents the environment. I express the forces of nature through a color palette that ranges in cool colors, whereas a range of earth tones represents matter. The paint quality varies from transparent to heavy areas to accentuate this concept. I want my viewer to be visually directed through the painting using the lines and colors as tools to access a calming and methodical state of mind.

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