Statement

Lydia Rae Black	Statement
Home Resume	I paint garbage because it is not precious, it is not nostalgic, and it makes the painting more important as a painting than it is as a commemorative artifact of a time or place. This thought, along with scattered notions of environmentalism, has led me to make souvenirs out of that which we usually wish to ignore. Trash is already commemorative- it is an object of evidence of our daily lives, but rarely appreciated, because the disposal of these items is regarded as necessary. There is a mystery to abandoned items and places, an unspoken narrative which takes place in the mind of the viewer. It is romantic without being burdened by the saccharine. Perhaps archaeological in nature, my paintings expose the amount of waste inevitably produced by the life which I live. Unwittingly my paintings bring up notions of poverty and ownership- by painting waste, I also publicize and expose the reasons for discarding and abandoning their subjects. Usually I paint from scenes that I have witnessed personally, and am not at all disturbed by the distortion that occurs between observation and execution. The comfort of being liberated to alter an image to make a change is vital to the process, and indeed vital to my work as a painter.

I paint garbage because it is not precious, it is not nostalgic, and it makes the painting more important as a painting than it is as a commemorative artifact of a time or place. This thought, along with scattered notions of environmentalism, has led me to make souvenirs out of that which we usually wish to ignore. Trash is already commemorative- it is an object of evidence of our daily lives, but rarely appreciated, because the disposal of these items is regarded as necessary.

There is a mystery to abandoned items and places, an unspoken narrative which takes place in the mind of the viewer. It is romantic without being burdened by the saccharine. Perhaps archaeological in nature, my paintings expose the amount of waste inevitably produced by the life which I live. Unwittingly my paintings bring up notions of poverty and ownership- by painting waste, I also publicize and expose the reasons for discarding and abandoning their subjects.

Usually I paint from scenes that I have witnessed personally, and am not at all disturbed by the distortion that occurs between observation and execution. The comfort of being liberated to alter an image to make a change is vital to the process, and indeed vital to my work as a painter.