If Walls Could Talk Art Exhibit at Jennifer Perlmutter Gallery
NOVEMBER 10TH THROUGH DECEMBER 3RD 2016
Influenced by family life and the daily ways we interact with our dwellings, Shannon Kaye makes art with typical building materials and tools from latex paint, plywood, and furniture wax, to sandpaper, paintbrushes and trowels. Some of the paintings are covered with journaling, the story of dreams or thoughts, the featured image inspired by a conversation she imagines having with her grandmother, Artie.
Shannon's work takes the form of still life, collage, pattern studies, landscape, and memoirs that evoke a nostalgic sense of places in time. My ideas are driven by rhythm, pattern, and color, and the writings represent those interactions between our decorated surroundings and the stories that unfold within those defined spaces. This latest memoire based body of work delves deeper into experiences and relationships that have shaped me, and how I’m processing them in my current relationships to create new environments, both physically and spiritually, and newer better stories. The moments I recount don’t necessarily dictate the patterns I choose to create but they do determine the mood, the colors, and the amount of surface my writing will cover. The landscapes are also reflective of our internal scenery and how we view our experiences, as they become passing vignettes of memory in our lives.
Shannon’s narratives are flashbacks of relationships and reflections that bring her uniquely layered patterns and decorative themes to life in a body of work that’s both refreshing and familiar. Painting on salvage plywood panels and used furniture as an extension of her focus on interior environments, Shannon prepares and works her art with common home improvement tools and mediums from latex paint and furniture wax to trowels and paint rollers. Her work appears balanced, colorful, even pretty, at first glance. But a closer look reveals rich contradictions with landscapes that mark time and text that seems to float through space. She layers dark color schemes and hopeful affirmations and wedges elegant lines and optimistic colors against rough edges, tattered patterns and tempered lettering all being pushed into the background. Her work is nostalgic but her vision is honest giving her work a deceptively decorative feel that reveals rich human truths that connect all of our experiences.
