Artist Statement

Shawna Atkins

Color and texture are the most dominant elements in my artwork. Since texture is the tactile surface of something, meaning you can feel it, I find it to be an appropriate dominant element. I want and need for my art to be felt on both physical and emotional levels. Each color has its own intensity and produces and individual emotion. I love to manipulate this dynamic by creating moody color schemes. I place colors next to each other to see what effect they have on our senses.

Human figures are my dominant subjects and tend to be distorted and abstracted from reality. The juxtaposition of internal and external elements of the figure (bones, objects inside) with their environment (forest, city, textured landscape) is a metaphor for how human bodies interact with the physical world that we call reality and the utter pain and joy this interaction creates. Other alterations of bodies also have symbolic meaning; headless figures represent the anonymity of the individual in our world’s massive urban populations. The missing pieces and holes in the body also reference the sense of loss and that “missing piece” that so many of us have, whether it is hunger, homelessness or loneliness. The physical holes refer to holes in the soul. However as a counterbalance to this, many of the figures are healed and whole, some with stitches.

The fact that the bodies are female bodies is relevant because I am female and this affects my view of the world and because the female form has been a common source of expression for ages. From the Venus of Willendorf to billboards, from politics to fashion this form has been molded and abused, worshipped and forced down to the core of our psyche.

The wispy spirit figures continue the dynamic of body/environment interaction by adding another dimension: the energy of the soul. My paintings ask questions. Do we have souls? If we do, are they eternal? If we don’t, do we still have meaning? These works are meant to engage the viewer in thought about the nature of reality and the mind, the nature of emotion, its range of intensity, and the way it is felt in our bodies. Using color, texture, and symbolism to question what our western culture determines to be real, and sharing a spiritual creative force with others is the main mission of my art.