Artist’s Statement: Lyn Belisle
The Arrow and the Song – 2111
My work is a synthesis of images across time presented in a contemporary context using pages and scans from old art books and museum catalogs in combination with my own digital photographs. As an undergraduate art major, my influences were Jasper Johns, Larry Rivers, Cy Twombly and other abstract expressionists whose collage-like paintings intrigued by hinting at snippets of untold stories and myths.
I found that by combining fine prints of paintings by the old Masters with my archetypal photos of fruit, eggs, and other symbolic objects, I could create a rather mysterious story that transcends time. The expressions on the faces of the Renaissance men and women who modeled for paintings are rich and complex and, when chosen out of their original context, lend a humanity that speaks to the contemporary viewer.
I combine state-of-the-art digital photographic manipulation with traditional materials such as gold leaf and walnut ink to bring the images together visually and thematically. The titles of the works hint at the story as I see it, but each piece invites the viewer’s own interpretation.