The Beat of a Dragonfly's Wings (Surface 2) (2015) Sculpture by Kristopher Lionel

Kristopher Lionel. 'The Beat of a Dragonfly's Wings (Surface 2)'. 2023. Oil, Acrylic, Aniline Dye on Plywood. 47 x 59.5 x 2 inches.

This work is the second piece in an ongoing series titled 'Surfaces'. To talk about this piece, and the resulting series, I need to provide the backdrop, the setting that led to the initial conception. After receiving my Bachelors of Fine Arts Degree in 1994, then going on to attain my Master of Fine Art Degree in 1997, both with concentrations in sculpture, I was offered a job working in a metal fabrication studio in Atlanta, GA. After a couple of years of this, I decided it wasn't satisfying my creative compulsions, so I moved back the the Northeast to start an artisan/art furniture design and fabrication business (a 'commercial' use of my skills with the ulterior motive of "working on my art" in the space and with the tools and equipment used to build the furniture). Part of setting up my workshop was to build a large table as a main working surface, the base of this table had a 1/2 inch (removable) sheet of plywood screwed to it as a top. I made it removable knowing that it would take a beating and eventually need to be replaced.

A number of years later, as I was looking at this worktable that had accumulated several years of cuts, scratches, holes, and stains, I saw shapes and lines suggesting a strong composition and realized that it was calling out to be made into a work of art, a wall sculpture. With paint and stain I began to emphasize selected shapes and obscure others. After working on it laid flat for a time (often looking down from atop an eight foot ladder), I separated it from its base and worked on it upright, cutting through it and making the recessed shapes you see in the finished piece. Working through the process of discovering and creating this piece, I decided that Surface (thought of as both noun and verb) was how I would name it. Years of building furniture on this work-surface resulted in a rich accumulation of mark, these marks eventually surfaced to reveal the composition of an artwork. Surface is both what it was and how it became what it now is.

'The Beat of a Dragonfly's Wings (Surface 2)' is an abstract, surrealistic landscape. The piece features two 1.25 inch deep recessed shapes backed and edged in steel. The bas-relief carving in the work is comprised of geometric shapes and the shapes from deconstructed, stylized dragonflies and cattails. Thoraxes, heads, abdomens and wings are interwoven with other shapes throughout the work like cryptic writing or glyphs. I combined this "writing" with warm hues of red and orange and offset it all with a bright blue circle to create a temperature and lyrical connection to summer.

* A note about the series, 'Surfaces':

The process described above, in which the accumulation of mark resulted from making furniture, ended when I decided that furniture making wasn't satisfying my creative compulsions and began to focus singularly on my artwork. The lines and marks, etc. in the work, 'Dissociating & Tumbling (Surface 4)', and all 'Surfaces' moving forward, were/are accumulated from my art-making process.

My large-scale pieces are intended to envelop and immerse the viewer so that the experience of the work may provide respite, a space for reflection.

Related themes

AbstractAbstract ArtAbstract LandscapeDragonflyDragonly's Wings