What drew me so forcefully into painting, photography, drawing, writing and my connection to the creative process is a mystery. Over the years I have found out more about creative and energetic forces and their parallel relationship to daily life and art making. On this web site, I am able for the first time to bring together 23 years of these works. It is not a full representation of what I have done, but a sampling of what I can present in this format.
I am fascinated and inspired by people and thus I find what is truest to me through re-creating human form. There are many reasons why my subject is often the female figure; She is close to me, to who I am, and I find her the most primal and the most challenging. The “External/Internal” series, 1985 was created while I studied at UCLA with the use of a slide image given to me by artist Robert Heinecken. I used this image repeatedly, often on top of many of the nudes inside of the room. This series revolves around the relationship between inner self and projected self. The viewer is placed in the position of confronting the facades they fix upon themselves and others, examining classical views of life and it’s symbolism. This is in many ways the root that my other works grow out of.
Parallel to my focus in “External/Internal”, I have been engaged with the relationship between what is created and what is “real”. I use the still image becoming a live model in both video and performance as seen on this web site in “A Waking Dream” and in “Joining Duality of Male and Female”. Many of these works are unfolding the dream; Softening the lines between art in it’s physical form, and what is alive, while recognizing the intangible or that which comes to us from out of this world. Throughout many years of this process, the symbols of daily life and those used in classical iconography have become a poignant aspect of this imagery.
Over these years of working, I have found a freedom to place the dark, the light and the marks in tone and color where they go - beyond representation and the more technical aspects of painting and photography; I am in fascination with these components and thus my work can become abstracted. In this process of creation, life’s magic is pronounced. October 2008
I am fascinated and inspired by people and thus I find what is truest to me through re-creating human form. There are many reasons why my subject is often the female figure; She is close to me, to who I am, and I find her the most primal and the most challenging. The “External/Internal” series, 1985 was created while I studied at UCLA with the use of a slide image given to me by artist Robert Heinecken. I used this image repeatedly, often on top of many of the nudes inside of the room. This series revolves around the relationship between inner self and projected self. The viewer is placed in the position of confronting the facades they fix upon themselves and others, examining classical views of life and it’s symbolism. This is in many ways the root that my other works grow out of.
Parallel to my focus in “External/Internal”, I have been engaged with the relationship between what is created and what is “real”. I use the still image becoming a live model in both video and performance as seen on this web site in “A Waking Dream” and in “Joining Duality of Male and Female”. Many of these works are unfolding the dream; Softening the lines between art in it’s physical form, and what is alive, while recognizing the intangible or that which comes to us from out of this world. Throughout many years of this process, the symbols of daily life and those used in classical iconography have become a poignant aspect of this imagery.
Over these years of working, I have found a freedom to place the dark, the light and the marks in tone and color where they go - beyond representation and the more technical aspects of painting and photography; I am in fascination with these components and thus my work can become abstracted. In this process of creation, life’s magic is pronounced. October 2008
copyright©Claudia Kleefeld 2011