I am still yet I am life
«Still Life: Four studies of the human body and North African textiles, 2005
After seeing the Royal Academy exhibition Matisse, his art and his textiles exhibition, the similarity in our working process was reaffirmed. Both of us collect textiles and use them as backgrounds in our work. We both are inspired by North Africa textiles in particular and Matisse also visited Algeria where I wish to go later on this year.
Furthermore we share the ritual of assembling textiles and setting up the studio with fabrics as a background, to galvanize our artistic practice. Matisse understands and apprectiates the beauty and simplicity of working with textiles. The hallucinogenic properties of the overlapping of patterns, shift and swell in his paintings, override perspective and divorce shape from colour. His paintings appear to expand the viewers eye and mind.
This spellbound quality is highlighted in Matisses later abstract works that incorporate simple forms. By wrapping my body within textiles I extend Matisses methodology of transforming both the figure and patterns into a single pictorial plane. By loading patterns upon patterns in ‘Still Life’, I also create and control tensions with the fabrics that provoke a transcendental experience. Yet, my self portraits also play with objectivity and contain an inherent stillness which Matisses still life paintings also possess.
I am still yet I am life
A return to the organic Shakti Goddess power of Mother Nature in Study no. 4 is inevitable after seeing a horrifying reflection of the artificial, paranoid, neurotic internal world in Study no.1 & 3 epitomized by todays post-modern urban landscape. One of the starting points for the positions was the traditional Buddha poses of walking, standing, sitting, reclining.»
Imagem: Grace Ndiritu, Still Life, 2005
