Sylvia & Marina Painting

Born:Oct. 31 1975Chicago Il.Lives:Philadelphia, PA I paint what I wish to see in my life, what I haven't seen. Subject matter is happenstance to what is going on in my life- much of which is processing my perspective on the world and life- the wrestling of spirituality vs a life of limitations. Letting go of what the subject matter is supposed to be or look like, there is a coincidence of how I connect honestly to who I am through the creative process and what the image is- I look for new ways to see. This process has nothing to do with an art for arts sake attitude, but to raise my consciousness higher and maybe connect to the viewer in the same way. In my view, life is a complex interweaving of thoughts and feelings that sometimes clash, sometimes harmonize and sometimes fall flat, but when we look at it all in a certain way there is always beauty to be found, even if it takes change within us to get to it. The genre I feel closest to is folk art, or outsider art, but with a connection to some contemporary ideas; I've often called what I do "Modern Folk". Having been raised with both folk art and classical portraits in my family's home, some that are over 150 years old, as well as an interest in modern art, it created a desire to mix everything I know as well as the simple curiosity of "what would happen if..." into paintings that rarely repeat themselves and wanting to find and master the next way of expression in my own personal way. To a certain extent I don't let the contemporary art culture effect how I make art- I see categorizing and judging art from an intellectual standpoint as limiting- our intuition is a type of intelligence that is rarely embraced in culture mostly because it cannot be measured or understood through intellectualizing. In my opinion, there is too much analyzation about things that can be experienced simply through intuition and feeling. With very little visual objective in mind but following my intuition and looking for a "feel", the image often gets continually reworked until things click; this involves a lot of experimenting. The subject matter gels when the image is translated from intuition into something that appears more comprehensive to an idea or feeling; but still what is most important in the image is the feeling.