Daphane Park

Austin artist Daphane Park created oil paintings on wooden panels for her exhibit Tierra Tierna on view at Women & Their Work.

Artist Statement

I am drawn to create an impression of space, not by an application of a specific theory of vision but by the accumulation of acutely observed details, which gives an image a poetic rather than a descriptive value. I am also attracted to producing the suggestion of natural space and form yet blending this space with the destruction of that illusion by using intense color in flat planes. Representing all objects in focus, I invent a more complex space that addresses the true nature of the painted surface. Merging the two-dimensional pictorial image with the three-dimensional form of the supports, I
form an environment.

My painting is an examination of how landscape has been perceived, used, and translated symbolically throughout the history of art and cartography. Tracing the edge of a continent and turning it into a two-dimensional form illustrates the desire of power and the beauty of exploration. My extensive travels in Latin America have heightened my awareness of the relationship between tourism, colonialism, industrialization, and ecology. The images are meditations of the natural environment and its flux: geological as well as geopolitical. The images act as separate worlds, countries, or ecosystems. My intent is for the spaces to become physical and psychological contortions of nature such that the viewer can enter each painting as a unique event.