drawings & paintings
Artist Statement
My works are about making worlds and systems for introspection, often through making mixed-media paintings or installation as a method intrinsic to self-care, buffering the living experiences. I work in oil with a mixed of acrylic gouache, graphite, oil pastels and colored pencils, along the side of collage materials such as sections of old drawings, ribbons, vintage cake recipe booklets, confetti, beads, and hand-sewn fabric pieces. The paintings are formed by a set of rituals I came up for myself, categorized by two angles/perspectives of thinking through mapping:
(a) Mapping as Play: trailing, physically collaging, collecting materials in places, strolling, the act of close-looking at design history embedded in everyday life, and logging these sources of inspiration into a fabricated dictionary or image sourcing system called Elements Menu. The Elements Menu serves as a map key, logging images of mass-produced, manufactured and replaceable designs; collected ornaments, icons and miniatures; menus; gridding, variation of objects organized in a grid form; parts of interior spaces; advertisements and signboards; objects which adorns or decorates.
(b) Mind mapping language: journaling, writing or mind mapping information to notice or un-confuse the relationship between memories, feelings, and conscious thoughts.
(c) Mapping in space
The making of this world is endless in space, self-determined, bound by infinite trailing and reinterpretations of these rituals or mapping processes from real life into paintings that are adorned and adored.
ongoing draft by Lu 11/2022