Marie Bukowski, Honorable Mention in New Works in Contemporary Printmaking

Left: Interstices #41  Right: Interstices #43

Artist Statement

I present conclusions. I record the spontaneous appearance of a thought. My work contains the results of an investigation into the nature of relationships; or it is the clear declaration of a complex idea. Ideas generated in my work, owing to inspiration from mathematics, address issues beyond those unique to works on paper.

Printmaking is a process of testing differences. In the process of questioning distinctions, the mind, eye, and hand sometimes shift in and out of synchronization. Speculation, or the suspension of decision, leads below the surface of order into the ambiguity of conflicting perceptions. Printmaking, therefore, becomes a meditation on the meaning of certainty.

My meditative concerns have proven to be more analytical/critical. I have been filling notebooks with geometric and organic forms that eventually evolved into diagrams. This exploration has pushed me to arrive at the visual/intellectual issues that occupy me every day. I rely on the predictable perfection that is drawn directly and technically uncomplicated, where lines do not necessarily meet each other or end where they logically should, circular dots are not carefully rounded, and counting does not conform to an associated number.

My work is often deceptively simple using motifs that include words, numbers, grids, diagrams, boundaries, and linear, near-universal forms such as circles and ellipses, as well as some that suggest contortionist cups and vessels posing as hieroglyphics. Arranged in sequences like the syntax of a secret language, or the poetic notations of an autistic architect, they appear amid vaporous mists of color. Together they comprise something like a dream, or maybe the schematic of a dream. In my work, seemingly random forms are actually engaged in a dialog with each other, and also, with the viewer. Their placement is conversational, where they can only be deciphered through imagination.

The complex facture of my work and other process-related residue in an array of nuanced visual structures signals a change in my work. Filled with contradictions, my work has become unabashedly personal, but also is a direct expression of an intellectual pursuit. I am guided by a consciousness of the impossibility of finding simple or immediate answers to most questions worth asking. I realized that these questions were answered to a degree that required additional challenges, moving into another realm; embedding conceptual problems and strategies into a larger arena, where I can approach diverse spatial issues.

© 2012 Creative Arts Workshop. All rights reserved.