STATEMENT OF WORK

www.mariabritton.com

My art includes painting, sculpture, and textile-based works called Draperies. In my distinctive bodies of work, I explore notions of femininity and feminism, high and low forms of making, and dreams and disasters. Through my use of everyday materials including used bed sheets and newspapers, I transform materials typically on their way out the door into an opportunity to elevate and extend experiences of liminality. Accumulation is integral to my process and partly what my work is about. Dated bed sheets act as windows for peering into specific times from the past. The surface of a bed is a place where one both experiences and escapes reality, a gateway between two realms. My approach to making is improvisational within the constraints I define. I want to strike a balance between chaotic gestures and structure. I’m interested in exploring psychological themes through abstraction. Feminism informs and supports how I make and the materials and techniques I choose to work with. My paper pulp sculptures, made from newspapers and miscellaneous papers, are carefully constructed to combine abstract floral forms with loose interpretations of bodily movements. Working with my own mix of pulped-up papers refers to the newsfeed and information overload. Influenced by clothing construction, the human body, curtains, windows, and cycles in nature, my work is a material exploration of the immaterial.