Robin Hextrum
My work derives inspiration from recent environmental upheavals. Drawing heavily from 17th century Dutch vanitas, still life masterpieces that were a reminder of our brief existence on this planet. My works embody a contemporary version of the theme. Flowers symbolize beauty and the transience of human life within the vanitas genre. These works take the extravagance of the 17th century still lives to an extreme by enlarging the scale and adding bold and vibrant colors. These works ask viewers to consider the mortality of our planet.
Other of my paintings explore the tension between natural and constructed worlds by contrasting organic and geometric elements. The combination of animal imagery with abstract shapes and unusual colors alludes to the dire state of our natural environment and the necessity for animals to adapt to a new climate. Caught up in swirls of abstract marks and unnatural colors, nature pushes forward to combat toxic surroundings. My paintings also explore the dividing lines between representation and abstraction using various degrees of resolution and construction of illusionistic space. Crude drawings sit beside polished and rendered imagery, creating a jarring and even theatrical quality, and further developing the sense of tension. Formal and conceptual juxtapositions develop into new possibilities for interpretation and reflection about our place in a vulnerable ecosystem.
Ajean Ryan
My work re‐interprets landscapes, both as pictorial spaces and as a genre within the history of the visual arts. I embrace ornamentation and beauty as it addresses themes about the feminine, but I present the embellishments as both functional and obfuscating. Detail and ornamentation in my work allow me to obscure and conceal subversive and hidden motifs and images.
Some scholars have described ornamentation in disparaging terms, as a tactic to hide truth behind the gilt and shine. But ornamentation appears in the natural landscapes that I’ve known all my life, in the striking patterns of birds, insects, flowers, and plants. Ornamentation is deeply functional—even though it does obscure what the thing really is. Organisms decorate and embellish themselves so that a species will continue to exist, and the sum of so much misrepresentation can make for stunning visual ecologies.