The Theresa Byrnes Projects
Earth pigments, hair, dirt, water and paper are the materials I have been using in my new paintings.
Smearing dirt, bleeding color from ochre, cutting my hair, placing it, guiding the color in streams of water and siphoning it by hair absorption I stain the paper and while I paint in this way I contemplate the human relationship with the earth and with nature.
In this performance I commit my entire body to the contemplation and to the painting of a 30 ft work.
Dirt, mud, dust is a substance laden with biota, the primordial glup we came from and shall eventually return to. Hair is our rope back to the beginning; within it is our story, our genetic code.
Earth pigments, hair, dirt, water and paper are the materials I have been using in my new paintings.
Smearing dirt, bleeding color from ochre, cutting my hair, placing it, guiding the color in streams of water and siphoning it by hair absorption I stain the paper and while I paint in this way I contemplate the human relationship with the earth and with nature.
In this performance I commit my entire body to the contemplation and to the painting of a 30 ft work.
Dirt, mud, dust is a substance laden with biota, the primordial glup we came from and shall eventually return to. Hair is our rope back to the beginning; within it is our story, our genetic code.
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MISSION STATEMENT
I am painter and performance artist. My art has become increasingly concerned with our culture and community at large. All my performance art is political, a social commentary and my painting that precedes the development of a performance (or follows) is a deep contemplation of the issues particular to it. My work and especially my performance art bring into focus our core behaviors and beliefs that combine across the globe to affect the human condition. Acts of government and nature can leave the individual feeling powerless but also faultless. It is my aim to make people aware of how we collectively pull the stings, to be critical of knee-jerk thought patterns by questioning the way we are programmed.
As my career as an artist progresses I become a lot more interested in the big philosophical picture, what mental and emotional constructs make the world-go-around. As an artist I feel it a responsibility to become aware of this civilization‘ paradigms with a view to shifting the psyche to make real and lasting change for the betterment of the planet. This sounds lofty but my approach as a painter and strong community member is gritty and grass-roots.