Carolina Cleere - Artist Statement 2008

The primary focus of my work is the narrative portrait of lost innocence. I am inspired by personal experiences and "found stories" from the outside. Children are icons of innocence but their purity is fragile and fleeting. My work is driven by a desire to explore these emotions from joy to angst and hope to pain.

Another recurring theme is my passion for nature, a stimulus since childhood. Plants and animals re-appear throughout, while visual symbols and colors are used carefully to relay the context of a piece.
My hope is to lure viewers into a narrative world full of allusions, leaving the mind room to explore its own meanings.

I consider a piece successful if it meets my vision for a topic and simultaneously celebrates its intrinsic beauty. My goal is to achieve a balance of personal expression while conveying a universal message to the viewer.

My process begins with an idea or an object of inspiration. Because my formal training is in photography, I rely on chance to capture imagery, whether a found object, a subject or a landscape.

If the quest of a particular item eludes me, I enter my studio and create the object before using the camera. After I collect photo images, I painstakingly arrange and re-arrange the pieces into a composition on the computer.

After printing multiple tiles, I glue them onto wood before using acrylic paints for the final piece, keeping the same attentiveness to detail used on the computer.

I want the viewer to be drawn in by the content, but to feel pleasantly surprised by the raw texture of the surface. This careful combination of techniques creates a unique final image with the toggle between control and chance and nature and machine.

There are many rewards throughout these steps, but none greater than the ability to push past my own expectations into a subconscious creativity.

Photograph of Carolina and "Fluffy" taken in 1968 by Rob Lucas.