Mariah Fee
Artist Statement
Time Ride
My paintings capture time. Literally, they are a record of many moments of marking surfaces.
Unique kinetic activity apparent on the picture plane results from the repetition of sections built
and destroyed- added and subtracted. A history of the painting is visible in the final work.
Layered remnants from the earlier stages, earlier points of time, signal from below the top skin.
Time is trapped. Using these traces of change allow the painting to spatially evolve and come
alive in the viewing.
I employ an open ended view that allows incorporation of chaos and random occurring in the
search and shift of the image. My painting process shares much with the collage process- layered
juxtapositions unbound. Washed veils of ether, clouds of transparent color alternate with wall-like
grounds of marble dust. Opaque slabs of paint against the noisy hieroglyphics of linear sign
images and tangled writing; silkscreened in layers, untranslated yet recognizable.
There is a dialogue between physical action and internal language, search and response. A joust
between the composed and change; transforming inert material into live wires. Attention animates
the painting as associations read from pockets of space; perception breathes in the watery
atmospheres of color. Urban and primal images vibrating in labyrinths and raw marks, the
paint-out with it’s tactile palimpsest; all of these ingredients create an emotional, dramatic charge
to the paint.
The challenge is to recognize when there is a balance to these densities. When this happens, the
painting is fixed and also fluid, contained but alive and continues to change as you look at it.
Through this condensation of experience, perception has a
chance to open the illusion of time and reveal the immediacy,
the all of the all at once. The release of time.