Shana Pearlmutter

I see my mixed media artworks as psychological and biological specimen; a personal and universal mix of allusions, hurdles, and reflection. While the work speaks a language of idiosyncratic marks, I pay homage to the ambiguous spaces and biomorphic vision of American painter, Terry Winters. Fusing together organic forms, experimenting with the painted surface and building up layers of over-painting has become a launching point for my creativity as an artist.

My language is made visible through the build up of acrylic glazes, the addition of postmodern appropriated and repeated images, scraping the surface, printmaking, as well as drawing and painting to explore the processes of growth and decay. Inquiries of cognitive connections, microscopic landscapes, and the tangents of memory show in the many layers. Magnified worlds become social petri dishes that subtly comment on environmental health, body care, and the dynamics of human interaction. Bas relief found objects become links to the material world. The viewer is encouraged to discover the ties between the ordinary and the sublime, between the industrial and the organic, between the disposable and the sacred. Neural synapses, optics, changing weather patterns and biological systems also enter the visual syntax that helps make my thoughts literal. In many ways these image sources become another metaphor for my fascination with the complexities and consequences of contemporary life.

Since my recent visit to Morocco and marriage to a Moroccan man, I have adapted the ancient art of henna into my visual language. Often the ornamental henna drawn is representative of North African Amazigh (Berber) symbols used to celebrate joyous collective events, issue protection or consider the power of superstition. Having visited Morocco as an American woman, having married into a Moroccan family, I have become a witness to the diverse ways women in Morocco can assert their identity. I now face the challenge of being a part of a culture full of rituals and traditions that are foreign to me. Integrating the botanical and geometric repeating henna styles into my work is a way for me to do two things: find a meaningful visual symbol that represents this important cultural shift in my life and pay tribute to the precious tradition of henna that has been continued exclusively by women since 3000 BCE and is today, used in many of the same ways to signify important thresholds of life.