Marsha Hemmings

Feb 17

Moorestown, NJ

Website
MarshaHemmingsArt.wordpress.com

How would you describe your work?

My paintings are an unpredictable, intuitive combination of abstraction and figuration that come mostly from my imagination. There is a playful, melancholic feel that I have while working that manifests in the painting. I am trying to be as true to that process as possible, while looking at the world, seeking to understand being. Elements of my isolation, cultural clash, instability, hope, all reveal themselves in their own time and in surprising ways.

What inspires you?

Inspirations vary...sometimes it's the application of a color or gesture. Other sources are Nature/life, and people I grew up around, folklore, various forms of creative output of any kind, writing, film, and my memory of Jamaica. I especially seem to be painting through my childhood lens.

Art and I were never separate and I never called it art. For a long time, its expression was such a part of me that I never saw it as a thing that I could grow or affirm as my own. It would manifest in many different ways and I never directly looked at it or questioned it. It was just me living. This may have been cultural, come to think of it or maybe just my family in particular...not much emphasis placed on defining the arts as special. Not considered much different from breathing or thinking...but art was everywhere. I eventually started to embrace doing art consciously for better or worse, even though I had been doing it unconsciously for years.

Can you speak about your process?

I intuitively build colors, strokes and textures with various mediums. I play with perception, shapes and line driven in part, by a sensory buzz, giddiness and surprise I get from various types of application and color. Nature is a baseline I return to over and over directly and indirectly. I look, sometimes for a long while and pull out whatever calls out to be revealed or emphasized in the painting. I tend to use anything around me that catches my thought or eye as tools to simplify and carve , until the image feels true to me. I go in and out of dream-like states during this process

Do you have any favorite artists, movies, books, or quotes?

There are no favorites for me. I love many, many varying artists. I tend to lean towards intuitive painters. Examples I look at are Julie Mehretu drawings, Rose Wylie, Cy Twombly, Howard Hodgkin among so many others, but to call one's name is to betray so many in my mind. The same for movies. Music and life go together. Tastes are truly very wide...That being said, silaence is the breath of life

"And like an artist with no artform, she became dangerous ", Sula, Toni Morrison

"The first of the line is tied to a tree and the last is being eaten by ants ", 100 years of Solitude. English translation from Spanish, Gabriel Garcia Marquez

Any more thoughts about art, creativity, or anything else you would like to share?

So much can strip away awareness ... I think I use painting, the process as well as the contemplation, as a reminder in a way...to stay aware.