Artist Statement - The Thing Is

Drawing Suites

In the ongoing series entitled The Thing Is I have limited my scope to depicting single, vessel-like objects. They derive from the idea of what constitutes a container, a familiar and universal entity in its capacity to hold something - having sides, a base, and an opening for receiving and delivering content. My invented receptacles allude, at least in part, to such qualities that a vessel summons up.

Through an accretive process of shaping the form with successive layers of charcoal, a density of surface evolves creating an impression of material solidity. Together with other features, such as the addition of a lid or void-space at the object’s top, reference to a base plane, curved volumetric contours and reflecting surfaces, I mean to convey the dimensional presence of a "real" thing.

At the same time, the soft-edged, amorphous, and seemingly immaterial effects that the medium of charcoal allows, makes possible a transformative, contingent, and more ambiguous object, one that cannot be pinned down with certainty. My "containers", because of this approach, remain persistently imaginary, the thing is what it is – open, indeterminate and elusive.

- Paula Elliott, 2013