they call it a "transitional phase"...

well... in the interests of professionalism, i've actually created a website exclusively for artwork. it's got an artist statement and everything! which holds me to a standard somewhat but that's good. not all the work needs to make the cut.

i'll use this blog for what i originally intended it for: talking shop. now that i'm out of school, i'm a bit afraid of losing my awesome art vocabulary if i don't use it. it took me a long time to learn all that jargon and, hopefully, one day i'll be fluent in art-speak. i'll get my practice in here... feel free to correct me when necessary. i'll continue to post new work here for awhile and use this space to talk about my intentions as well as my reservations within my practice.


It's pretty clear to me that the work seems to have moved into a much darker space recently. my work has always been a bit dark and kinda creepy, but over the course of the last few months a certain shift has taken place. color has almost completely left the work (an aspect that many people have commented on) and i've also done a few full-face portraits which is extremely different from the cropped portraits i usually do. my love of minimalism is really starting to show through too (the fence drawings, for example).





i finished this painting about a week ago and, right now, i think it's the best thing i've ever done. in this piece, two bodies of work have finally come together. the girl on the tire swing is Jon Benet Ramsey. she has been a subject of a lot of my paintings.

my desire to paint her has always been an attempt to restore her humanity. i don't care about all the beauty queen stuff, i care that she was a little girl who was assaulted and murdered.

but by looking at the painting, there is really no way to know that it's a painting of Jon Benet Ramsey. it isn't titled that way, the fence obscures her face, and one would have to look back through my work of the last year in order to learn the identity of the "Anonymous Girl"... which is great. the story is much longer and sordid than what i'll write here.

it could be anyone's daughter on that tire swing... and that's exactly how i want these paintings to be read. but it wasn't everyone's daughter, ligatured and body dumped in the corner of that basement. one family suffered this horror.

the fence is my impossible attempt to protect her- not only from her murderer, but from us as well: the watchers. by refusing to paint her the way the media did, by presenting her as exactly what she was - a little girl - i intend to highlight her loss.


above:
Anonymous Girl #3
16" x 12"
oil on canvas
2008

angela simione