Arielle Adkin,
Drawing

The art I make confronts our daily struggle to integrate elements of man-made, hand-made and nature-made into our own lives. My paintings are a result of the layering of these ideologies. More and more, I turn to the photocopier to construct backgrounds and patterns. This stark, black and white, pixilated pattern represents the man-made artifice of the technological world we tend to live in. Next, there is the element of paper. Paper torn, paper stained, the cut lines of paper, all adding texture to the surface of the man-made photocopies. In the imperfections of the paper is an exploration of the hand-made. Finally, a common theme of nature can be found in my work. Using loose, idealized strokes of oil paint to represent a bird, a fish, a deer, or a cloud-filled sky. All the while this natural subject is cast into an ambiguous space that is riddled with photocopies and cut paper. The patterns created within the space serve as a matrix for the natural painterly style to simultaneously exist in and rebel against, like dandelions that thrive in the cracks of an urban sidewalk. The dandelions life and resilience represents a moment of sublime, ephemeral, triumphant beauty.