Specimens: Painting In Form
By Monique D. Lopez
Witnessing my father wilt away from multiple ailments was a traumatic experience.
After his death, I wanted to see what the diseases looked like that invaded his body and my mind. In my exploration, I was taken aback by the allure of the microscopic images of diseased cells. They were beautifully saturated with color, but their elegance did not equate to the grotesque effects it did to his body. I was left with the eternal question of: How can something beautiful be deadly?
For “Specimens: Painting in Form,” I chose to work with complementary colors (red and green; blue and orange; yellow and purple). Johannes Itten in The Elements of Color writes, “We call two colors complementary if their pigments mixed together, yield a neutral grey-black…Two such colors make a strange pair. They are opposite, they require each other. They incite each other to maximum vividness when adjacent; and they annihilate each other, to grey-black, when mixed—like fire and water.”
Disease cannot exist without a body and like complementary colors, they are a strange pair. When combined an oppositional battle begins. However, if the body should succumb to the ailment, a “grey-black is mixed” and a complete annihilation occurs because neither one no longer exists.
It has been 18 years since I stood at my dad’s bedside and helplessly watched him take his last breath. Since then my work has been my outlet to heal, as each cut, mark, knot, or bead that is placed onto each piece is like placing a stitch on my wound. Throughout my practice, there has been a constant metamorphosis--a transformation that has continued from one “body” of work to the next. Certain aspects in the work inform each other as to what changes need to be taken to create the next “body,” like going from cutting the work completely out of the frame, to returning to the frame and allowing some of the barrier to remain to include the duality of contained/uncontained, to bringing the work into actual space with installation. Also, the body of works that are made, not only inform themselves but also the materials that may be involved, like beads and fabric. I transcend these materials beyond their initial use, making them become something else visually. The Specimens are dissections from much larger entities and the current metamorphosis in my process that reflect the idea of containment. During this transformation, I became aware that as a painter, I step outside paintings traditional aesthetics, but the formal elements are still involved like line, shape, color, composition, and form.
By Monique D. Lopez
Witnessing my father wilt away from multiple ailments was a traumatic experience.
After his death, I wanted to see what the diseases looked like that invaded his body and my mind. In my exploration, I was taken aback by the allure of the microscopic images of diseased cells. They were beautifully saturated with color, but their elegance did not equate to the grotesque effects it did to his body. I was left with the eternal question of: How can something beautiful be deadly?
For “Specimens: Painting in Form,” I chose to work with complementary colors (red and green; blue and orange; yellow and purple). Johannes Itten in The Elements of Color writes, “We call two colors complementary if their pigments mixed together, yield a neutral grey-black…Two such colors make a strange pair. They are opposite, they require each other. They incite each other to maximum vividness when adjacent; and they annihilate each other, to grey-black, when mixed—like fire and water.”
Disease cannot exist without a body and like complementary colors, they are a strange pair. When combined an oppositional battle begins. However, if the body should succumb to the ailment, a “grey-black is mixed” and a complete annihilation occurs because neither one no longer exists.
It has been 18 years since I stood at my dad’s bedside and helplessly watched him take his last breath. Since then my work has been my outlet to heal, as each cut, mark, knot, or bead that is placed onto each piece is like placing a stitch on my wound. Throughout my practice, there has been a constant metamorphosis--a transformation that has continued from one “body” of work to the next. Certain aspects in the work inform each other as to what changes need to be taken to create the next “body,” like going from cutting the work completely out of the frame, to returning to the frame and allowing some of the barrier to remain to include the duality of contained/uncontained, to bringing the work into actual space with installation. Also, the body of works that are made, not only inform themselves but also the materials that may be involved, like beads and fabric. I transcend these materials beyond their initial use, making them become something else visually. The Specimens are dissections from much larger entities and the current metamorphosis in my process that reflect the idea of containment. During this transformation, I became aware that as a painter, I step outside paintings traditional aesthetics, but the formal elements are still involved like line, shape, color, composition, and form.
