Janie Paul

Artist’s Statement

My work investigates the ways in which landscape imagery embodies fundamental sensations of being in the world. It explores the mixture of two distinct kinds of space whose combination expresses the variations and dimensions of consciousness. Using landscape as a metaphor, I work to represent the confluence of vision and memory, the simultaneity of how things look and how they feel, the intersection of wakefulness and dream. I find forms that resonate both with perceived reality and with inner dimensions of thought and emotion, and develop vocabularies of images that express their intersection.

My recent work arises out of my particular connection to nature and my fascination with fundamental things and phenomena: the gestures of animate and inanimate beings toward and away from each other, the revelations that come with light and with darkness and the way that thought slips in and out of consciousness. It is about the nesting of worlds within each other and the simultaneity of diverse experiences in the same place.

I alternate between the intentional activity of drawing and painting and t he scanning and reconstruction process of collage. These methods reflect the ways in which we move forward with the new and reformulate or reassemble the familiar to enlarge our world. Some of the images reflect the way we experience the whole; some mirror the fragmentary nature of our experience or the way in which beginnings of things emerge piecemeal or are layered over each other to create meaning.