In 2003 I picked up a book "Kali:The Black Goddess" by Elizabeh Harding, which described some of the tantric practices of this cult. One concept in particular caught my attention "... to overcome one's attachment is not as difficult as mastering one's aversions." I can apply this to the development of my artwork in the following way: I have noticed that the art I most detested in the past somehow surfaces in my work years later. In 1990 I would never have envisioned myself making figurative sculpture. At that time I was making abstract paintings, concentrating on pattern and form. I disliked expressionist gestures. I looked for techniques that created shapes devoid of the artist's hand.

Foreign travel has been important to my art practice. In 1980 I traveled toJapan, a thoroughly exotic place to me, with the mysterious temples and incense. Stone sculptures were dressed with bibs and little hats! I found a continuation of that ritualizing activity in India, where icons were smeared with pigments and covered with flowers. By 1995 I wanted to make things that would be touched. I started casting small porcelains and this activity developed over a number of years into the complicated, combine forms that you see now. Ironically I find myself deep within the territory of expressionist sculpture, something I sought to avoid in painting decades ago.

Aversion is, of course, the shadow side of my huge attraction to nature, both as a total environment, and the specific shapes and textures of plants; tree bark as skin, leaves as fingers, branches as the arms and legs of a body. My sculptures grow out of the figurative suggestions of plants resulting in works that are both comical and grotesque. However, the stitched together appearance of the sculptures make sense. Like the husks left behind by the transient body, they are both solid and illusionary.

- NANCY EVANS

 return to top