Artist's Statement | Anou Mirkine Designs

Artist’s Statement

Artist’s Statement

The Relationship is an important theme in my work.   The subject relates to another element in the painting, or to the viewer.  There is a dialogue. The composition defines the dialogue, and although I use my own photographs for ideas, I isolate a particular dynamic in the image to create a composition with meaning and relationship.  The intention is to create a painting with a unique mood or emotion.   The painting tells a story of a moment in time.

I find relationships intriguing, and as I wander through life’s experiences, I often observe unique communications between two entities that compels me to pull out my camera.  I capture it, and worry about the composition later.  I feel inspired to create when I see two dogs kissing, a bird eating road-kill, a man thinking at a coffee shop, or birds on a wire sharing their day’s adventure with the rest of the flock.  I love watching animals interact with each other, and the beauty of that compels me to express it in a painting.

In the past I focused on portraits and still lives.  The use of the camera to capture birds in relationship began in New York, but I didn’t do very much with it.  I struggled with subject matter, media, and whether I could make it as an artist compared to Julian Schnabel.   Now, I don’t care about Julian Schnabel.  I enjoy painting what I see, and what I understand and feel to be the situation.

I am a realist with expressionist tendencies.  I work in pastel and conte crayon on board.  I build my paintings like one would build a sculpture.  There is texture and movement in my work.  I love to use the eraser as a pencil.  There is so much depth in a removed line or mark.  It’s gone but it’s still there, never really being able to be completely erased.  Mistakes are part of the relationship.  I choose colors which harmonize with each other.  There is a colorful accent somewhere in the painting.  I use red, or another bright color, to draw attention to one area.  Mostly, I use a narrow palette.

My goal is to capture the reality of what is, the expression of my subject, and the space that surrounds it.  It’s a snippet in time, and through that I bring the view into the scene so they can see what I see and feel what I feel about the story.