Artist Statement

My art is a physical representation of my search for identity and peace in a world driven to make us insecure and anxious. This body of work followed a period of sickness including but not limited to a tumor in my thyroid and hospitalization from salmonella that greatly influenced my perspective of the world and thus influenced my art. The somewhat disturbing figures are almost confrontational, urging you to look deeper and to question their emotions.

I make art because it has always been the most natural way of communicating for me. It provides emotional release and helps me work through emotions and feelings that are difficult to put into words. This body of work consists of various pieces using charcoal, oil paint, and mixed media. I represent my ideas often with the human figure, though abstracted in various ways. The most notable abstraction being my use of color, which is very vibrant. These vibrant colors represent the heightened state of emotions, both the highs and lows, that I often feel simultaneously. I represent my ideas this way because it most adequately encapsulates the way that I feel and more broadly attempts to touch on the range of anxieties and emotions that we all feel due to living in such a fast paced and detached society.

I derive my subject matter primarily from my own emotional experiences as an attempt to articulate my feelings. However, a lot of my subject matter is also inspired by the life around me and how I believe that others feel collectively as well. I try to capture the emotional experiences that we all go through that often remain under the surface. These brightly colored compositions are a deeper look into my own psyche, but also an exploration of human emotion as a whole. I was taught to use color sparingly and only paint and draw from observation, both of which I have veered away from. Though I think drawing from observation has constantly informed my work, I feel the most creative freedom when working from an internal space. My artistic influences have varied greatly throughout my life, and have varied from traditional oil painters to directors and even tattoo artists. I am greatly inspired by Jean-Michel Basquiat and the way his art was so free in its approach but so moving in its message. Egon Schiele’s emotionally driven work really inspires me to keep reaching deeper in my art as well.

This body of work runs parallel to me beginning to question many aspects of our society that we often take at face value, and the emotions that evolve out of that questioning. It is a look at a deeper part of myself. In a society that benefits from us working on a superficial plane, my work is an exploration of what’s beyond that. It’s a search for what’s truly human in each of us, an invitation to look deeper and be confronted with the confusion of it.

Calli Scarborough(2019)