Maria Speck | Painting
Artist's Statement
I make paintings that function as a form of social criticism, reflecting on human nature and the shifting conditions of the real.
These artworks depict the building of worlds. They form narrative spaces that attempt to connect innocence with the fantastical, making use of literary devices and images of specific objects like rubber ducks, big noses and eyes, rivers and water, manipulated bodies, and unblinking birds.
These images both reinforce and re-examine existing connotations as well as make satirical observations of the human experience.
As I have grown older my narratives have become tainted by the patterns of thought and the toxic events of the real world, including the extra-ordinary forces of materialism and consumerism, and their connections to wasted time, loneliness, temptation, and guilt.
In the end, I view this work not as an escape, but as productive space for considering what it means to live on this planet.
