ALICE ANNE ELLIS
Artist Statement
"Piecing it Together"
In this body of work, I am concerned with our concept of the past, and how the nature of memory affects our perceptions, from person to person, and from time to time.
We rarely have access to a complete set of data, whether we are looking at a scene right now, or remembering an incident from the past. Shadows and corners, even our moods, obscure what we see. A new perspective yields a new set of data. The things we remember vary over time. Usually time makes them more vague, but sometimes an obscure incident becomes clear, years later -- or seems to. We reconstruct, reassess, piece it together.
Using ink on paper, I borrow from the tradition of patchwork to take apart, rearrange and create new works from fragments.
I am influenced by the composition and mark-making elements of Japanese sumie. Sean Scully is one of the many artists I find inspiring, particularly for the physicality of his work, and his belief in the "personal universal."