NEO•GRIOT

I started this series of hair and braid paintings in the summer of 2008 for a group show that I was in called: Inspiration: Paterson at the Passaic County Community College Art Galleries in November-December 2008.  These acrylic on paper hair and braid patterns are based on photos I have taken of students and strangers I have come across in Paterson, New Jersey where I have worked for the past 9 years.

I have a strong interest in hair as a transformative vehicle of physicality.  I am also interested in the associations of hair and hairstyles as indicators of social, cultural, ethnic and gender affiliations.  The interest in urban hairstyles is of particular interest since these hairstyles are unique to a particular social, cultural and ethnic experience that is not my own.  As a woman, I have always been aware of the power of hair.  And perhaps because of the experience of my strict and traditional upbringing, I have never explored the full potentials of my own possible hairstyles in public. Perhaps it is through my paintings that I am able to explore different representations of identity.

The Dreamtime is a reference to the pre-colonial Aboriginal Australian understanding of life and the particular viewpoints as understood by the dreamtime.  This could be regarded as a form of spirituality.  The dreamtime was an understanding of time and the creation of all things as told by myths about the continuum of past, present and future.  The aborigines believed in what the European coined, the dreamtime, which to the aborigines was an interconnected way of living on an earth that they believed was inhabited by the spirits of shared ancestors. I am titling my painting series for my upcoming Paterson Museum exhibition,The Dreamtime for a few reasons that have to do with this original reference.  These hair and braid pattern designs are for the most part viewed from an aerial perspective.  In most cultures around the world, perspective in art is aerial. It is not the egocentric perspective of European Renaissance art.  The aerial perspective that the aborigines used in their art was a way of showing that nature, the land, life, the earth, all living things, and all creative forces are greater than us, but we are tied to and interconnected to all things around us as spirits floating in a time continuum.