MEREDITH BINGHAM

• Artist Statement “Painting and sculpture are not skills, that can be taught in reference to pre-established criteria, whether academic or modern, but a process, whose content is found, subtle and deeply felt.” - Robert Motherwell

I do not see my work as images to be decoded, signs and symbols to be intellectualized; the visceral quality of the work is its primary focus. While the backgrounds are labour-intensive, the gestural action that completes the work is done quickly, making the work about the energy that those final marks took to make. Before the final gestures, the ground presents itself as a kind of archeological find, each layer revealing yet another. The shapes that are painted on the surface, like written text, from left to right, are usually circular. But I do not see the circle in a clichéd manner of “beginning and end,” or as a symbol, for example, of unity or infinity, but rather as an automatic connection of the unconscious. My emphasis is on the perceptual impact that the viewer experiences that can be likened to my own physical encounter with each painting.

The Beginning of Black
48x67
Acrylic on canvas

Rolling West
Acrylic on canvas

Full Blue
31x52
Acrylic on canvas