Welcome to Curating Some Damn Art, a new series about the artwork I feature on my other site, Buy Some Damn Art!
This week on BSDA we launched a really lovely show by Amanda Brazier, a painter from Chattanooga, Tennessee. The series, Of Dust, references the elemental materials that make up everything from the pigments the artist sifts from the soil to make her paints to our own flesh and blood. The themes of shelter and physical structures run through Amanda’s work and are also present here. The artist’s mother recently moved out of Amanda’s childhood home, so the artist gathered dirt from a dry creek nearby and incorporated pigments from this soil into these paintings.
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Amanda’s process: “I gather red and yellow and brown (and sometimes purple!) earths from around my home and other locations in Tennessee and North Carolina… I pound each in a mortar and pestle until powdery. I then use geological sieves to sift the pigment until it is super fine. After combining the pigment with just enough linseed oil, I grind it on a glass slab with a glass muller.” – Amanda
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“The pinks, browns, and oranges are what the earth gives me. Working with the richness of the ground, I’m aware of several concepts at once. I’m constructing a painted space with materials from my surroundings, fixing a certain place onto each painting. Also, the structures we build are extensions of ourselves. Which, in turn reminds me of the story of Creation in which God forms Man out of the dust. Dust is a material of creation. It also serves as a reminder of the transience of man. We are of dust, as are the things we build.” – Amanda
