Rose Umerlik Artist’s Statement 2007-2008

The skin of each day is thick with automatic motion. We move in our stiffening leather routines, across the surface, towards home. Somewhere in our amnesia, there are anchoring lines to memories that remind of us of who we are. As we fade, our history pares down to a few shapes, colors and lines; curving, or jilted, they map our return to ourselves, to our sensitive skin. These underlying details warm our collective childhood, our collective touch, scent and luminescence, breaking our amnesia, and giving us a moment of recognition akin to pure joy.

Distances Within Us

In this current body of work, process plays a central role. Layers of lines, pigments, and shapes are laid down, cleared, and then selectively restored. Through decision and re-decision, the contradictions inherent in the human experience are momentarily acknowledged: the beautiful and the censured, joy and pain, anger and empathy, intimacy and isolation – from crippling psychological complexity to the freedom of letting go, and then back again. These tensions undulate on the painted surface, disappearing and reappearing, becoming familiar and risking rejection. In order for the painting to be conclusively realized, selected parts of the painting must disappear, and it is those parts that have disappeared that let the painting live.

In the forefront, at a distance, or decidedly tucked away under layers, these infinite emotional and psychological states of the human experience engage in an organic sharing of a person, and that act of sharing is the subject of this body of work. Specifically, distances within us refers to the spaces that exist within ourselves – the necessary room we must create to accommodate the full scope of our humanness. Underneath every field of color, area of rest, line drawing or detailed form lays a history of mark making that led to the final composition. Partially obscured, a complexity exists that mirrors the intricacies of our minds, our hearts, and our struggles – the ineffable things that are our essence.

Intimacy of Forms

The foundation of my work is to extract the intangible, emotional moments that live in our collective human mind and heart, and interpret them so that they may also exist outside of ourselves. To interpret these psychological and emotional states, I use essential elements – forms, lines, colors, compositions – and draw from my experiences in the world and from within myself. Through this, I hope to convey an experience of what it is to be human.

The immediate inspiration for this group of pieces stems from the time I spent in East Berlin, Germany, during the summer of 2008. Immersed in a city still in the midst of reconstruction, I found myself gripped by the lingering affects of the suffering that was imposed upon East Berliners during the era of the Wall and I became acutely aware of the awesome power of human resilience; reflection and meditation on this strength is what fuels this body of work.

All the lines, forms and intersections found in my paintings reflect a language governed by relationships: the form by itself is just a form, but by introducing another form, line or mark, a profound relationship is established between these elements. It is this relationship, the intimacy of these forms, that creates a complexity that mirrors the intricacy of our minds, our hearts, and our struggles – the ineffable things that are our essence.