i intend for my drawings to sit between comic tragedy and cautionary tale. although there are many sources that inform my work--victorian children’s books, buddhist philosophy, movies, satirical writers such as voltaire--it is living in contemporary america that informs my work most.
my drawings reflect current political, economic and social events in a non-direct way—so that the quiet poignancy in an event is what the viewer experiences rather than the specific details. i feel we are missing compassion, gentleness and humor in american culture. when we barrel ahead, unaware of each other and convinced of our invincibility, we set the stage for disaster, and every disaster, private or public, is bittersweet. current life is horrific and sweetly tender. i use watercolor to render the chaos pretty, and to illustrate the naiveté i witness within our cataleptic culture.
i am interested in how banal, disconnected images from multiple sources can be combined to can create layered meanings, and so most of my source imagery comes from the Internet. i think about how technology is playing a role in the tradition of painting and drawing, and how our easy access to global information via the Internet has changed how we experience the world and how we consume and understand images.
currently, i am working on three new bodies of work in my studio: a series of drawings about america’s relationship with china titled made in china; new experiments using folded paper dioramas to create three dimensional drawings; and animated drawings with minimal movement, which are rear-projected onto paper. images of these new works will be on my website in may.
*images and text courtesy of http://www.kimrusso.net/
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