The first paint was earth.
My work begins with oil paint, a physical substance of color, value, texture. Paint is of the earth as I am, as we are. Paint is an intimate and primal tool; I use oil paint to observe human and earthly life.
Paint’s physical similarity to the earth and to human and celestial bodies, and Its primal connection as a substance made of the same chemicals as humans, the earth, and the atmosphere, fascinates me.
Blurred boundaries between human and non human animals, between antiquity and the contemporary, between dark and light as both physical properties and as metaphors, between our lives and our deaths, things liminal, fragmented, on the way to becoming something else, all of these invite, tempt, and intrigue me. Things incomplete, suggestive rather than clearly declared or bounded; I value art that acts as a catalyst for the blurring and softening of boundaries.
A primary focus of my painting has been the torso - fragmented, partial, in a state of imperfection and decay simultaneously hinting at its frequently missing head, which through its absence recalls our heads as our thinking and rationalizing centers. Classical torso relics remind us of our cultural history, time passed, loss. My torso paintings look at the relationship between our animal instinctual selves and our human cerebral selves.
The earth, with its richly varied atmosphere - somewhere between a place and a visual memory - is a more recent focus.
Painting reminds me of what I don’t know but recognize as familiar. Both the torsos and the atmosphere paintings use oil paint as a vehicle for reflective thought. On a good day my studio life feels like a mixture of paint and thought dancing together.
Eileen Senner
May, 2022