KAOLA PHOENIX – ARTIST’S STATEMENT

I work in mixed-media, combining collage and acrylics.  The blending of the two affords me flexibility and contrast.  I like both the directness of the painting and the more involved process of collage and the layering I can achieve with both.

These pieces evolved from an interest in working with simplified shapes, to pare down composition graphically, while trying to embody potent messages.<

The house is one of my favorite images as a container and protector of family, as a diagramming of a system of human interaction and as a prison of people and emotions.  Sometimes it represents the body itself.  So both abode and abide pertain.  The two houses next to each other mirror and contrast while containing the same ideas as cited above.

The Corpus/Core shape is a body, a seed, a leaf, a tree, a spade, an oar, a boat – and all of the complementary and contradictory notions those objects embody. 

From here I moved to Boat + World + Tree.  This is the tree of the Norse myths which holds up the world, the oar (or mast) of Odysseus, and the symbol of the earth’s flora interacting with the fauna (in photosynthesis/respiration).  The combined symbols are meant to act as a modern totem of concern and hope.