April 28 - May 21, 2017
Nancy Strube – "Wonderland - Exhibition of imagination, color & form"
Archival Digital Prints
Helena Davis Gallery
Opening Reception for the Artists
Friday, April 28, 2017
7:00-10:00 pm
Free and Open to the Public
Closing Artist Talk
Sunday, May 21, 2017
2:00 pm
Free and Open to the Public
Artist Statement
WONDERLAND is an exhibition of digital drawings from the imagination. Large poster sized archival prints are brightly, boldly and richly colored that transport the viewer and excite the eye. The archival print color and paper will last at least 200 years. The digital images are drawn using the mouse as a pen to create an image on the computer. There are no scanned imagery or copying references. The artist draws from memory having a mental conversation of words and inner images inventing the form. A general format emerges of masculine and feministic shapes. Images are represented by abstractly drawn faces and birds. A mental left-right hemisphere dialogue of the artist creates the drawing. The process is a discovery of insights and synapses of thoughts, images and feelings. The forms are intuitively, conceptually and emotionally drawn. The artist starts a transcending process from an objective to an subjective state as the drawing is completed. This stimulating and engrossing journey develops into a state of exciting inner awareness. In a sense, we can think of the drawing as be a frozen thought process.
Computer layers are created from simple to complex composition using computer techniques that add shapes, colors and lastly details. A calculation occurs in the process trying out all different layering techniques. This calculation occurs when new color and forms are added to the composition. There is both randomness and precision as a result. These layers increase the richness and depth of the image. A finished drawing is the result of 5 to 10 prior drawings, each one becoming more clear. A perfecting of color and shapes occurs in order to refine the image.
The drawing process creates intensity and rapid thoughts accelerating to a total mental absorption. This absorption melts mind, hand and machine into one. The operating of the computer becomes intuitive and the process is no longer linear, logical and known but automatic, cerebral. This produces a process that is not able to be repeated. Therefore, each drawing has its own unique non-linear thought process. When beginning facing a blank screen, a whole new thought process must be created by discovery. The prior mental process of thoughts must be reinvented and the old one forgotten. The memory of the prior creates interference with the new creation. A difficult and interesting birth of a new wholistic vision must be built from outward reality into inner depths and breath of imagination. The development of the image is not pre-drawn but an evolutionary. The image success results in the clearness of the thought process. A clear thought process creates a clear image. Creating this process is the challenge. The imagination sometimes gives us shallows of images and vague feelings until the artist discovers clarity. The artist translates this to the drawing process.
Copies are made in different stages of the drawing exploring various color, composition and meaning possibilities. In these the artist visually determines how abstract is the image. In the drawings images and relationships are discovered and rediscovered when revisiting in a drawing.
In the "Kiss" series the images are compositionally divided into four mental states of the artist's thought process, the bottom of the image is primal emotions, top is thoughts and spiritual feelings, left is male and right is female energies. The "Bird" series are spiritual images. They reflect our visions and needs in nature for freedom, wisdom, beaury and fertility.
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