barnowlsmall-copy Painting by Carol Lorac Young

ARTIST'S STATEMENT

Since childhood I have enjoyed and nurtured the process of free association. I like to imagine the evolution of things like books, no longer wanted, turning to ashes, the workings of weather on inscriptions of gravestones, brown house paint becoming hot fudge sauce atop an ice cream sundae. Very often my paintings are three-dimensional wherein ashes are made from ashes, headstones are made from crumbled rock, and latex fudge sauce stretches down and drips off the bottom of a canvas.

I am a hands-on person and the more directly I can engage with my work, the greater my pleasure. For creating collage, I keep scraps of everything, especially parts of unfinished works and dried acrylic scrapings from my palette. It’s always a challenge to find the right piece of something for the right space in what, as yet, is still nothing. The rest is much like working on a jigsaw puzzle. Holding the visual memory of each specific shape and its surroundings, I know that sooner or later each one will turn up right here, somewhere in my house.

The combining of unrelated three-dimensional objects (an assemblage) is similar to collage. For me it’s child’s play- like nesting boxes or lego sets- finding two or more pieces of anything that physically fit together. I can continue to disguise the separateness of these unrelated objects by limiting my colors; I might use metal pieces that are rusted in one assemblage or paint wooden spools, plastic spoons, metal springs and bottle caps all in the same color for another. Through the natural fit of parts and the uniformity of color the finished piece will fool us by appearing to be a simple, single entity.

My work can be humorous, serious, mischievous, absurd or disturbing. It can be childish or sophisticated, realistic or abstract. Whatever the mood or the style, my hope is that viewers will look once, then once again, wondering, “Good grief... What is this?”

• Nationality: UNITED STATES
• Date of birth : 1945
• Artistic domains:
• Groups: Contemporary American Artists