KAREN YURKOVICH
ARTISTIC STATEMENT
Over the last several years, my work has used nature (plants, trees and their fruits) as the subject matter to explore the workings of the natural world and to function metaphorically for social situations and human relationships. In the series “B.C. Natives and Immigrants”, the plants and trees many times took the place of people, or represented their desires and expressions of identity. This series was followed by “West Meets East”, which used the bonsai ideal to contrast Western and Eastern ideas and aesthetics, and by “Family Trees” which dealt with personal history and social structures. Recently, I have been specifically concerned with the pressures of adaptation, and the subsequent modifications and metamorphoses that take place. Constantly faced with stimuli, we and nature, are put under pressure to react, reflect and adapt. These pressures, whether physical or mental, modify and transform reality. They change the structure of self and social identification. They stimulate activity, which in itself, apart from judgments of good or bad, remains a primary indicator of life.
The process requires the visualization or the creation of structures and schemes that express and facilitate our adaptation or metamorphosis. Visualization is dependant upon our needs. Through them we mold the world (natural and artificial), although we are constrained to develop the structures to express ourselves from those already existing. This complex relationship creates new systems and forms, involving invention and metamorphosis, both personal and social. As with nature, the effectiveness of the change is unknown, until tried against the environment.
My paintings mix, manipulate and distort the natural characteristics of the plants, their growth pattern, their colour and their form, with their symbology and mythology to produce hybrids which, in all their naturalness, are really constructions. Painting is a process of abstraction and visualization, even if the subject is naturalistic. My paintings should not be looked at as merely imitating nature. The titles of the individual pieces offer the possibility to look at the images more as metaphors. Writing the title on the side of the work so that it becomes a part of the experience carries this game further. The paintings represent and function on many different levels, in any relationship. As occurs in our everyday experiences, these constructions are not so obvious at first, but reveal themselves slowly as they pass through our various filters of reality.
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