ARTIST STATEMENT
I am primarily a self-portrait artist. I work with mixed media utilising fine art photography and acrylic painting to ultimately turn my body into a theatrical character. The eventual stories that emerge, depict resilience and strength in hardship. My work illuminates shared emotional experiences to create a sense of belonging relying mostly on personal experiences of what it feels like to be a misfit. My mission is to reproduce familiar feelings into visuals through digitally manipulated photographs, which are then painted over to achieve a conceptually layered piece of artwork.
My methodology to create self-portraits remains consistent in its process, whereby I firstly work alone with the aid of a camera, a tripod and a remote control. I then print the selected image and using acrylic paint I embellish the setting and character with necessary elements to help tell a tale.
I use a variety of ideas to create narratives I believe we are all connected to; the ones we are naturally wired to listen to, the ones that make us feel united in our pain, our hopes our journey of life. I continuously look to refine my visual language in a way that first intrigues and draws people in, then sets them thinking.
To me, being an artist is a never-ending journey through these ideas and human experiences. It is an exciting journey; building images from scratch, employing a rich visual language of surrealism and symbolism, which is made more familiar by often involving the natural elements of the woodland, always with a delicate yet powerful feminine undertone.
Ideas for the images are drawn from a myriad of sources; from conversations with people experiencing hardship, through poetry (my own as well as others’) to the woods I visit daily. They are linked by the same personal desire to find my own fit in the world.
Art, in times of need, can bring a kind of peace and comfort in how we interpret its depicted thoughts and ideas. By recognising one’s self in any art form, deep rooted feelings will latch on to the artistic experience and find solace.
Veronika Lavey
2023