Oath

“My work contains ideas about mortality, memory, and the passage of time. Like the 16th- and 17th-century Dutch vanitas paintings, my paintings are meditations on the beauty and brevity of life, encapsulated by the Latin phrase ‘memento mori.’ My pieces are also the repository for my interests in art history, language, science fiction, spirituality, writing, pop culture, and science. I am equally fascinated by the romantic tradition and methods of painting and of the technological era of today; my use of binary code in many of my paintings is to reference this digital matrix in which we now live.

My artwork is representational, but I am not aiming for an exact rendering, nor am I interested in a clear narrative. A painting can be an object of contemplation and response, and my intention is to engage the viewer in an ephemeral experience. Much of my work starts from a found photograph, a video still, or an image from art history. In some cases, I am re-contextualizing specific images; in other instances, I may be appropriating snippets—such as a Baldessari dot, a current hashtag, or a Mondrian grid—to weave a different dialogue within a historical genre.”

— Stacey Nadine Malysh