Sarah Schuster
Associate Professor of Art Studio, 1988

TOD -from the door TOD -main wall, one north TOD -motor TOD -paper airplane TOD -detail one

TOD -detail two TOD -detail three Wings -detail one Wings -detail two Wings -detail three

The series of small multi-panel paintings I have been working on are of different natural objects or phenomenom. In two series of paintings I am using images of roses and wildflowers that are taken from postcards I bought at the Metropolitan Museum. The postcards are reproductions of naturalistic illustrations done of these plants. First, I am drawn to the beauty of the images and how the images heighten my awareness of the beauty of nature. Later, I am struck by what little relationship the images have to the original drawings or paintings... their size, their physicality, their color. Other paintings I am working with use ferns, body organs, or insects as subjects. The images I work from range from naturalistic descriptions to highly stylized and decorative interpretations of the organic world. I like the irony of "naturalizing" these reproductions of nature through painting them. In the end what is natural and sensual is the process of painting and not its reference to nature. However, the process of painting an image that has an obvious reference to the natural world is inherently different than a process that is entirely self-referential. The difference is palpable to the artist and to the viewer. How is the image important? What does the process of self-consciously referring to the physical world through the tools of illusion and reproduction do for the artist and the viewer that the physical reality of the world does not do for itself? What purpose is served by developing the complex hand-eye coordination necessary to create images that apear "real," or at least "realistic," other than impressing the viewer with breathtaking displays of virtuosity?

In painting, images exist on the surface of the object and therefore on the verge of the physical realm. In photography, film, video, and computer imaging, a chemical or electronic process produces an image that appears behind the surface, creating a physical distance between the image and the maker or viewer. The close relationship that painting has with the physical world distinguishes it from these other processes. On the other hand, in western painting, the development of, and emphasis on techniques that create illusion, align the painting process with thought by moving the viewer's and the artist's attention away from the actuality of the paint. Vision has been granted a close affinity with the mind by some intellectuals and, in some cases, it has been pitted against the body. In the Introduction to Modernity and the Hegemony of Vision, David Michael Levin speaks about how, "...in formal philosophy, thinking has been thought of in terms of seeing." To many contemporary artists and intellectuals the process of observation, perception and sight seems hopelessly embedded in an object-subject relationship that enforces power over the observed object or passivity in the face of being observed. In my experience, painting from observation and/or representing the physical world allows me to negotiate the tension between my material and immaterial responses to life. Through "picturing" and the process by which I make paintings, (translation and interpretation), a vital interface is created between my material and immaterial experiences of the world. The metaphoric quality of illusion, (the "like-ness" or "as-ness" of the illusionistic image), helps me link the physical world and the imaginary processes of the mind and spirit. I do not expect my audience to be able to identify all the questions and intellectual ideas that provide friction to my painting process. My aim is for the viewer to experience, while looking at the visual records of my process, some of what I experience in the making of the images. The multi-panel format allows me to install the paintings differently in each space that I exhibit them in. By manipulating the space in which the paintings are viewed I am able to create a multi-sensory experience for the viewer. Ideally this expands the experience of seeing the painting to the other senses. This provokes an experience in the viewer that is more analagous to the physical process of painting. The original sites of western painting were primarily architectural, very often the church, and this wed illusionistic paintings' peculiar bond to thought and sight to the rest of the body and its senses.