Stephanie Chambers on Buy Some Damn Art
Wednesday, December 7, 2011 · 1 Comment
Brooklyn-based artist Stephanie Chambers is on Buy Some Damn Art this week and I couldn’t pass up the opportunity to share her work here too. Stephanie’s work is full of flora and fauna, and by excluding human subjects she sidesteps the many social constructs with which that we view them. She also has a deep love of Pomeranians and coconut water and was once an extra on People’s Court.
Go After What You Want, $500
Tell us about the work in this show.
All the paintings were made in San Francisco during a break from New York. I worked out of
The Blue Studio in The Mission District and spent my days painting and walking around in the Sun. I’ve been to SF many times before, but never to make art. I was surprised at how much the lightness of being out there permeated my work. The animals in the paintings are anthropomorphic in the sense that they represent universal human situations, including conflict and opportunity. I’d like each painting to tell a story and I’m drawn to animals in particular because I think they’re easier to work with narratively. We don’t have socially constructed ideas about what makes a fox or a butterfly truly beautiful or flawless, so I’m free to represent my subjects in an ageless and unbiased manner.
.
.
Are the animals in your work (butterfies, foxes, bats, owls) chosen for aesthetic or symbolic purposes (or neither)?
They’re chosen for both. As humans on this planet, we encounter and absorb so many stories and symbols about specific animals, and I like to play with these notions in my artwork. Even if the animals chosen symbolically are not traditionally considered beautiful, I try to represent them as beautiful aesthetically. I’m interested in making beautiful things. The butterflies often represent opportunity and change.
Together, Even At The End, $500.
You have a pretty unique style that is an amalgamation of figurative, cartoony and graphic elements. How are these visual frameworks connected in your mind?
For me, painting and the stories I tell are like the way people perceive memories. Some images in a memory are clear and rich with detail, while other aspects of that same memory may be fuzzy visually, just colors or shapes. Not everything is equally defined visually in a memory. The world in which these animals live is similarly fluid; a little like sounds you hear in the distance, but can’t identify the source. They live at the visual periphery of my mind.
.
Tags: Art
1 response so far ↓
1 For the love of the furry | sketch brain // Jan 15, 2012 at 3:17 pm
[…] Lovely!I’m also really loving these playful and fun paintings by Stephanie Chambers found in Art hound. So cute and colourful. I enjoy the pattern and […]
Leave a Comment