Statement

My recent paintings takes a look at the ideas behind iconography, relics, and symbols. They are traditionally used to tell stories, and/or represent something great or important. I use both existing and made up imagary associated with supernatural, religious, folklore, popular culture, mythological, and historical things to re-imagine icons, relics, and symbols. These inventions are a serious, but humorous play on the relationships between people and the things/beliefs that are important to them, or, in some cases, defines them. These objects, many which are not related to each other, are grouped together, as equals to raise questions about the status or importance about all of the objects portrayed.  I also cannot help but look at the whole collection as a self portrait, being my beliefs or non-beliefs, they define the things I think about in my life.  

The method of making these paintings is a repetitive, time-intensive process that includes decoration and pattern heavily influenced by Byzantine, and the folk art of many cultures, including Scandinavian, Native American, Aboriginese, and Persian traditions. Ideas for images and patterns also come from things I see on television, catalogs, store flyers, magazines, video games, record covers, the internet, and possibly the pattern on your shirt. They are compositionally centralized and heavily embellished like a lot of traditional religious icons.

The dynamics between colors create spatial illusions and/or vibrations which aid in enhancing the central image and/or other specific/"important" areas of each painting. Color and the relationship between colors had always been an intuitive process, but has become more thought out in the most recent paintings as the spatial illusions colors can create have become more familiar to me. 

To sum it all up, I make semi-humorous paintings of re-imagined icons, relics, and symbols using pattern, decoration, and rich color.

Sarah Stone