Artist Registry
The White Columns Curated Artist Registry is an online platform for emerging and under-recognized artists to share images and information about their respective practices. The Registry seeks to create a context for artists who have yet to benefit from wider critical, curatorial or commercial support. To be eligible, artists cannot be affiliated with a commercial gallery in New York City.
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STATEMENT OF WORK
ARTIST STATEMENT
Hiding in Plain Sight / Cause and Effect /After Thought / Accumulation
“AT 6AM, I am standing on the edge of the woods, the light quality is quickly shifting through the fallen branches. My dog is but a shadow moving silently in the distance.”
Mimi Young’s work has always been about mark making, ranging from gestural, calligraphic lines to organic sinewy shapes. She references aspects of her immediate surroundings, mostly distressed and disturbed rural settings as well as domestic situations.
“I am excited by what I can’t see, what is hidden in plain sight and the realization that what is not there is just as important as what is. These disparate elements forming incidental relationships and the patina that emerges creates a unique history.”
While working, she is thinking of a story; a story of the images she is creating, the space where they sit and their scale and relationship to each other. She implies a narrative rather than force one. Some work is the full story while others are CliffsNotes or short stories.
“Although my paintings are based in abstraction, the shapes I uncover contain aspects of the source material. Some things I reference are branches, vessels, animals, and furniture; to name a few.”
The need to get the relationship of forms to resonate, leads to the battle of building up and destruction of an image. The surface is thus charged with her missteps and afterthoughts creating a texture that reveals the paintings’ past. Cause and effect play a large part of where the pieces go. She makes a plan and then lets the relationship of the shapes and marks spawn something new. A lot of these marks, patterns, and shapes are repeated from one work to the next.
She is very aware of the edges of the paintings, either avoiding them completely, pushing outside the picture frame literally or has the edge interrupt a shape midstride.
Mimi uses a variety of materials including but not limited to graphite, charcoal, and acrylic paint. She also uses painted paper collage which delivers an intriguing sharp edge flatness to the otherwise more organic surface.
Mimi Young
2024