Jodi Hays
Tennessee
Artist Statement Submitted 2015
Painting is a state of constraint, an investment within limits, the same way architecture bends and works within our cultural matrix or grid. My work is an eclectic abstraction drawing from soundbites/language, pattern and the built environment. This composite of influences on the work from the history of painting to sights on a walk becomes an account of events and spaces, the painting serving as a surrogate souvenir.Primarily using oil paint and tape both as a resist and as an object itself within the work. I build up and scrape into the work. Hard edges (using tape, mask and stencil) belie a vulnerability to the work as a whole. I am interested in a kind of aesthetic redemption, that a painting can explore a sum of disparate parts made whole.