Paige Dawdy
OCAD University
My artwork is an ongoing exploration of self, through breaking down the barriers of my vulnerabilities. I do this by creating works about healing, pain and emotional numbing. Through self portrait, I am exploring the idea of the Internal and mental wounds, and the idea of the aesthetic of the bruise. Through gestures of the body and the bruise as a mark, I want to represent the feeling of pain and healing, with the expression of emotional numbing. By staining and material, I create a push and pull representing the presence, and the absence of the body. With the use of abstraction and realism, I want to play with the relationship of how the body interacts with a space, as well as bring forward internal pain as something physical. With these works I am exploring my body, emotions, and mind in order to help me reflect a healing state.
You can never really prepare yourself for anything really. You can try to prepare your body, mind, and essence, but it never truly prepares you for reality or truth. As much as you know something is coming, your body knows what's truly going on and with time it will react to your emotions. Nothing can really describe the way the mind and body folds and bends in order to protect the person as a whole. Knowing that you will never be able to fully appreciate something you have, as you have it, is hard to think about. Then it becomes true to what they say about not knowing what you have until it's gone. We get so caught up with ourselves, life and then we lose ourselves in the future. Things that you didn't fully understand become clearer, and people you wanted to know closer get farther away. Processing loss and experience become something that seems like one, and then you dream and act in a different time or place. Thinking about time that is not now, seems hard, but in a way it becomes the lease of your worries. We break down, we hope, we cry, we think and then we process everything in a healing state. The promise of the wound is that it heals, whether I can say that's true I don’t know.
Image 01:
Title: Layers of healing
Medium: Mixed Media
Dimensions: Installation
Year:2020
Image 02:
Close up of image 1 of Layers of healing
Image 03:
Title: Taken away
Medium: Mixed Media
Dimensions: Installation
Year: 2020
Image 04:
Close up of image 3 Taken away
Image 05:
Title: I lay awake body vibrating
Tossing and turning
Medium: Watercolour and dye on Satin
Dimensions: 20"x24"
Year: 2020
