Statement

About the recent work:

There are moments when I take notice of two kinds of time occurring simultaneously — a peripheral sense of anticipation for the next action to happen, alongside an overlay of timelessness existing only in split seconds. This recognition occurs randomly during a day; blankly staring out a window, watching birds fly from the feeder to trees going back and forth in the wind, floating in the ocean on a blue sky afternoon, eyes at the horizon line, not particularly in search of anything.

In T.S. Eliot’s poem, “The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock”, Eliot visually conjures a scene where time is inescapable and limitless. His words mirror the intangibility of my awareness most specifically in line 34: “Before the taking of a toast and tea”. Throughout the entire stanza Prufrock emphasizes both to himself and the reader, the dissolution of the struggle at the intersection of time and timelessness. Defining transcendence.

The images in this series of paintings are observed and imagined places where one can be in relationship with others and the world and the self. My use of scale, proportion, pattern and subtly shifting color are visual elements that create a slight perceptual and physical dislocation, not unlike encountering a one hundred year old bonsai tree.

These paintings are places where many kinds of time overlap. Concrete and ephemeral. There but not there. Phenomenon and mirage.

Gail Spaien
November 2022