Pamela
Lawton
Artist's statement,
September 2007
New York's vivid architecture, specifically, reflected forms in glass facades, provides the source of my "found" abstract views, which I make into paintings. This theme arose when I was a grantee in the Lower Manhattan Cultural Council (LMCC) artist-in-residence program at the World Trade Center (WTC) in 1997. I painted the view from Towers 1 and 2. The undulating, distorted glass mirrored my sense of feeling afloat and un-tethered from high up. The elevator passage and the vertiginous views induced a disorienting spatial sense.
I have pursued a theme of reflections in my work since painting in Florence, Italy, where I rendered the appearance of water in reflecting pools. When form (architectural, sculptural, or landscape) is reflected in water, it is transformed. Reflected space and water surface parallels illusory depth and painted surface. When awarded the WTC residency, I discovered an unanticipated parallel between the architectural view of Lower Manhattan and that of reflections in water. Through reflection in glass or in water, buildings and forms appear to dematerialize, multiply, and oscillate. This sensation in my work mirrors my being at the WTC or gazing into water --disorienting and shifting.
Fluid, reflected architecture continues to preoccupy me, in a current site-specific mural project at 180 Maiden Lane, opening September 25 th , 2007 (see exhibition information, under "Upcoming Exhibitions"), at a recent LMCC residency, as well as in self-made residencies at Marriot World Financial Center, and at the Millenium Hilton Hotel. In each of these locations, I look out, down, or across, and find a vertical path through a wall created by light. I render the details of fluctuating forms while simultaneously capturing the deep macroscopic space of skyline, sky and water in glass. In this way I attempt to re-see and to re-invent how I experience the architecture of my daily life in New York. |
