Consumption: Unshared Chiaroscuro
Chiaroscuro: The rendering of forms through a balanced contrast between light and dark areas. The technique, which was introduced during the Renaissance, is effective in creating an illusion of depth and space around the principal figures in a composition.
Artist Statement
Ours is a world filled with distractions. Turning away from the fire burning inside, we are plunged into a place of routine. Who we are ceases to matter on a daily basis. Traffic jams, deadlines, raised voices, squalling telephones silence the words of our souls. Some strive for happiness, others for salvation, others for a love like find sand. Some strive for questions that have no answers.
Will you turn inside and face your own fire?
I did.
The power and breadth and sum of past experience flared, rendering souls and burning off the chaff of the present with the sweet pain of untethered intensity. The voices of the world which had ceased to exist beyond the blinders of tunnel vision poured back in, overwhelming. I allowed myself to be consumed, and to see the ways in which we consume, in which we can be lost in our own madness. Facing the truth can be more dire than the fire. Laying it open, beauty and blemishes both bared, even more so. This work is the result of the passions that shatter my tedium. Every piece has felt the hot fall of my tears, the bright spill of my blood, the pressure of my damp hands, warm with exertion and passion. I hope the feelings they excite in you are intense and true.
The offerings for this show are a complex connection between the whimsical and the dark, reflecting the projections and reactions of the viewers back upon themselves. From the intensely hot rendition of the biblical tongues of flame to the intricate details of a Celtic spiral depicting the leviathan, this work is a commentary – sometimes quiet, sometimes thunderous – on that which consumes, both light and dark.
The offerings in this show are dedicated to the mother of the artist.
Consumption
Weigand & Toso
Reception May 8, 2009, 6-8p, Carbondale Civic Center
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Infinity Studios 