The Hand that Creates the I

Symbols, metaphors, and physical size are a few ways that the artists in “The Hand that Creates the I” reveal a human presence in their work.

Carol Bruns builds her abstracted forms out of wire, plaster, and paper. Grounded in the human form her larger than life pieces while initially made to be cast in bronze become entities unto themselves. Painted and colored they are at once symbols and expressions of the human
spirit.

Erika Ranee does large abstract paintings. Ranee brings a physicality to her work through the process of pouring thin layers of paint and simultaneously lifting and turning the paintings to change the paints course. Her work is a visual diary informed by the fragments of speech, text, and interactions that she has in her daily life. Behind the color and textural display is a powerful human identity.

The collage-like style of David Humphreys’ work incorporates varied genres of painting to investigate the psychology of relationships. For example, he paints a memory or desire by rendering a woman in a lawn chair whose hands become the heads of two dogs while a background of trees is described with big abstract brushes of green and brown. His combinations of rendered imagery and painterly marks within the same piece create a psychological fiction.

Using color and imagery from the Amazon Melanie Smith renders feelings of presence and absence. The abundant and feral nature of the jungle is an interesting location to use as a platform to observe human existence, or lack thereof. The images create a non-linear narrative and raise the question of how far we as humans will force our will on places that are not meant to be for us.