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Artist's statement:
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I paint to have
an opportunity to play with liquid color, patters, textures, and shapes.
"I paint to know myself. I know to paint myself." I make art to play and
to learn. I also make large-scale public/community mosaic murals, often
collaborating with other artists, students, or adult volunteers. I
make no distinction between my studio painting or working in collaboration
with others.
My personal artwork and my large-scale mural projects reflect a lifelong
quest to communicate the unspoken ideas and truths of my family/community/culture.
While these are my visions, they are sometimes developed and acted upon
collaboratively through living and interacting with others. For me, art
making is a deeply spiritual act that honors the creator in all
of us.
Each piece I create frames a reflection of a moment in time of my own
existence. As pieces are added together, in reflection, they tell me metaphorically
where I have been and where I am going; they become my past, present,
and future, they become my history. This constant dialogue in and through
the creative process allows me to tell my story and make a visual record
of my existence. As others view the work a new dialogue begins. This extension
to my family, friends, and strangers allows me to have an unspoken voice
in the mutual understanding of our existence together. It is my hope that
my visual statements merge and reflect the journey and unspoken truths
of others in our society.
Suggestions for Student Artistic Responses:
As you will see in my paintings, the Moon and rituals in women's lives
are important themes in my work. Students may want to make art work in
which a figure from the natural world becomes a character in their work.
I am interested in that place in the imagination where the dream world
and the waking world intersect. Consider how I use color to heighten this
dream-like quality. You may notice that food rituals (preparing greens,
morning coffee) is a source of artistic inspiration for me. What eating
traditions have meaning in your family? You may notice that our lives
at different times of the day are a theme in my work ("Sunday Morning
Ladies"). You may also notice that I sometimes mix up different painting
styles (such as very realistic images next to very abstracted images)
in the same painting. Consider why I choose to do that, and consider how
you might mix styles in a single image in your own work.
Here is some of the thinking behind my painting:
Many women of the contemporary western world forgot what our ancestors
knew - How to Dance with the Moon. Their lives were directed by the phases
of the moon, when to plant, when to harvest, when to cook certain foods,
when to fast, different phases of their own bodies were coincidental to
the phases of the moon, including when their children would be born.
I use the "moon" face when I am making references across cultures and
generations. I am refering to our cumulative consiousness, not a specific
individual, the women and children of our past. (The ones we conjure up
in our dreams as we try to understand our own connections to past lives).
Collard Greens (mustard, turnip, dandilion, kale, swiss chard and spinach
-other varieties of greens popular in black kitchens in the south and
north) extend across other cultures as well. In my family specifically,
greens were cooked on Saturday for Sunday dinner. I learned from my mother
and my mother-in-law, who learned from their mothers, the seasons in which
certain greens should be prepared. Collards are not sweet and tender until
after the first frost, which again refers back to the knowledge of planting
and harvest that has been passed from one generation to the next. As a
part of my work with students, very often I use food rituals to make general
connections that help these students understand their own culture and
family rituals. From this, I can begin to nurture the notion of "community"
from their perspective.
I know that Collard Greens are also eaten in Brazil - Mirtes Zwierzynski
and I discovered this connection a few years ago when I took Collards
and Cabbage (one of my special dishes) to her home for a pot luck dinner
(a dinner in which all the guests contribute to the meal). Mirtes is a
friend and artist colleague from Brazil who often works with me here in
Chicago. You can see some of her paintings
on this website. - Nina Smoot Cain
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"Lynn" copyright Nina Smoot Cain
