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Artist's Statements
My current work represents a radical departure from my previous paintings. While my earlier work consisted of landscapes and figurative pieces that had an abstract quality, I consider this new work to be abstractions of nature. The primary force that shapes and gives life to my paintings is fractal geometry. Fractals are ubiquitous in nature- from the microscopic to the cosmic- they take the form of patterns that are repeated at different scales of magnification. They are one of the profound natural forces that have shaped the natural world from the beginning of time- they may be found in crystals, fossils, leaves, trees, blood vessels, coastlines, galaxies and nebulae. Discovered by Mandelbrot in 1987, fractals define the patterns that to a great degree form much of the fabric of our physical and visual existence.
Historically, landscape artists have tried to capture the fractal quality of scenes in nature. I feel that I’m navigating fundamentally different terrain. Rather than trying to capture or imitate nature, I strive to distill the essence of the fractal geometry found in nature by allowing the paint to be moved by fractal forces.
This series is rooted in both contemporary action painting and classicism. In each work, I hurl paint through cardboard forms taken from the contours of Rembrandt paintings. I then guide and manipulate the paint using basic forces of gravity, pressure, heat, friction and sparingly, physical manipulation with brushes. I do this to explore the infinite ways that the paint flows, weaves together, separates, and interfaces. This technique is guided by a color theory that I have developed and refined over the years that was inspired by classical paintings from the Dutch renaissance. This color theory is based on the use of compliments that are tied to a core color- a transparent quinacridone gold – producing a color palette in each painting that is integrated, subtle, and luminous.
Ultimately, in this work, I aspire to a beauty that is complex and elusive, ancient and timeless, familiar and surreal. It is here that I try to reconcile the fundamental dualities of our human condition- birth and death, creation and destruction, the spirit and the primal substance of our existence.
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Helene Slavin
May 2010
In my paintings I try to create a sense of a place that expresses my longing for grace and beauty. My longing is not for a simple beauty, but for a strange and complex beauty that can convey the subtlest nuances of human pathos, from the deepest suffering to the most rapturous enchantment. This duality, which I feel characterizes the human condition, is at the core of my work. I try to capture and symbolize it through a visual language in which I balance and contrast various properties of color, form, and texture in order to create painterly effects that range from the lyrical to the dissonant, from the specific to the atmospheric. These effects are achieved through a variety of means, some of them painstaking and others riskily dependent on chance. My subjects—generally landscapes or human figures—are not significant in and of themselves. Instead, they are intended to suggest a narrative aspect, the sense of an interpretive human presence that connects the immediate image to a more distant past, the physical work to a spiritual truth.
Helene Slavin
April 2004