Paige Bradley

Paige Bradley- Artist Statement

Focusing on tensions and liberations in my work, I feel most of our emotions are locked into an existential cocoon. My sculptures show the human race as a singular individual, searching for connection, but finding only alienation.

My recent work has become a symbol of struggle; both being contained and liberating ourselves from self-inflicted boundaries. Fears of ostracism, avoiding distinction and hiding from greatness are all thoughts that come to mind, creating these wrapped sculptures in extraordinary tension. The figures struggle to unveil themselves in order to become understood and known. It gives me a sense of unrest as if too much life is jammed into too restrictive of spaces. I feel as if I am trying to live my truth free and unveiled in a society who would rather keep us contained.

From the moment we are born, the world tends to have a container already built for us to fit inside: A social security number, a gender, a race, a profession, an I.Q. I ponder if we are more defined by the container we are in, than what we are inside. Would we recognize ourselves if we could expand beyond our bodies? To be authentically ‘un-contained’ would we still be able to exist?

I attempt to expand my sculptures beyond the human flesh of the figure and create the brilliance within us. Simultaneously, I cannot help but to see a dangerous dichotomy between falling apart and expanding beyond our limitations. When devastation becomes deliverance, then ashes from the past can become the foundations of the future.