Drawings from a fractured narratives sprawl across the surface of my paintings. The imagery varies, often depicting memories of past places, people and moments; a palm tree from Los Angeles, a couple engaged in an intimate moment as one spits into the other’s mouth. At other times I appropriate images taken from illustrations and art history; medieval manuscripts, a picture from a children’s book. These can be grotesque hybrids of animals as well as bodies engulfed in sexual pleasure, often whimsical they can be both erotic and repellent. Although the starting point for my work is often drawings and ideas, the paint will eventually take over. The figurative elements become less important and the negative space starts to take priority.
The canvas’ acts as an intermediate space between the body and mind: they hold within them evidence of past trauma like scar tissue. I often work with rabbit skin glue as a primer which is then layered with paint and pencil. I then rub off the paint to reveal traces of what has gone before. Although impossible to fully remove the disturbances that have already occurred, I still attempt to dissolve and distil them through this process.
The painting is treated like a body, which is not something that is neat, pretty and contained; It leaks, bleeds and excretes. Paint too is messy, uncontrollable and fluid. An accumulation of dirt, paint and oil builds up to create the surface of the painting which resembles a kind of skin. This allows the drawings to become etched in to the canvas like tattoos hovering just below the surface.
The canvas has a memory much like our own bodies, which I try, and fail, to erase. Sometimes rather than removing, I attempt to mask it with more layers of pigmented glue. The extra layers act like scabs building upon the canvas, the pigmented glue rushes like platelets to heal a wound but the damage has already been done and the viewer can still see the residue; like veins beneath the skin.
~ Sarah Lederman
