Rina M Drescher » Profile

Location

Region

United States of America

City

Boston MA

Profile

Website

http://www.rinamiriam.com

Personal Statement

Rina Miriam Drescher's Artist Statements take the form of Something Else's because she always has something else to say about her work. These statements usually address individual works as well as give insight into the overall philosophy governing her art practice.

Something Else - (About the abstract paintings Cross Section 1 and Cross Section 2 and You Might Experience Some Side Effects)
This is a painting of a disease under the microscope. This was painted as Art Therapy. The idea was that hopefully by turning the disease into more or less an abstract painting, the artist could create a space between herself and the disease, which hadn't previously existed. By painting this, the painter takes what's inside herself that's troubling and puts it someplace else (the canvas). It doesn't solve the problem forever, but it helps. These are pretty big paintings because this was a pretty big problem this artist needed to solve. These canvases are about as wide as the artist is tall and taller than the artist is wide. It doesn't matter how the painting hangs in terms of which end is up because the disease doesn't have an orientation.

There are 3 of these large disease paintings painted from 2003 - 2005. The first was titled "You Might Experience Some Side Effects" and was exhibited at the artist's Senior Thesis Exhibition at the University of Rochester's Art & Music Library in 2003. The artist sees a distinct relationship between uncertainty in diagnosis and abstraction in art. - April 2009

Something Else - (About the abstract paintings Cross Section 1 and Cross Section 2 and You Might Experience Some Side Effects)
This is a painting of a disease under the microscope. This painting was painted as Art Therapy. The idea was to confront the situation by painting paintings of the disease in hopes that having turned it into an abstract painting, the artist could distance herself from the disease and perhaps be able to think of it abstractly, to give it less power, and minimize the trauma associated with the event. - April 2009

Something Else: About Rina's Artist Statements - Rina writes about what she is doing and why she is doing what she is doing. Do not plagiarize her statements that's called PLAGIARISM. Please try to think of your own statements and think of your own something to do. Do not copy Rina's art and pretend it is your art and then also copy Rina's statement and pretend it is your statement! Thank you. - January 2009

Something Else

I'm making portraits.

I like to make drawings and paintings of people that aren't quite right, that aren't perfect, that are flawed and funny and reveal personalities that are a little bit complicated and are sort of just being themselves except that I've altered them. In this way, by being themselves they are being the self that I give them to be. I find this incredibly satisfying.

This is not to say that I use flawed or necessarily not-quite-perfect models. I am extraordinarily fussy about my choice of models. My models are usually very beautiful and perfect until I make paintings of them.

- October 2008

Something Else - The works in the series She Sells Seashells are symbolic. Of course seashells are wonderful, beautiful little things to find and collect but they are also the remains of living organisms. This series is really about bodies, while centering around seashells, fossils, internal organs and pretty exteriors. The work in this series tries to remain positive and cheerful about it's subject matter, but it's subject matter is really frankly a bit grim at times. One can also argue that sometimes a cute little seashell is just a cute little seashell, that is also true. On the one hand there is something very sad about the works but on the other hand there is something very hopeful pulling them up. - April 2009

Something Else - The shells in Sitting In Situ are seashells and fossils both. It is the nature of seashells to move with the tides of the sea or be found and collected and travel around that way. It is the nature of fossils to be fixed in place or buried. "In Situ" means "in place" and is the term used by paleontologists to describe a fossil that is in the location in which it was found. This painting is as much about seashells as it is about life and death. - June 2007

Something Else

My works pay special attention to the delight of epiphany. They are about descriptive confusion, simplicity and complication, very clear transparent things and very opaque abstract things. Being very sure or else very uncertain, at the same time, within the same moment.

This particular desire is a result of reading a lot of poetry. Consider the line "Battle forth your spangled hyena finger stumps (from Corso's Bomb)". There is something very clear yet very confusing about that. This is my point. If I was sure I knew exactly what a spangled hyena finger stump was, perhaps there wouldn't be the same reason for my interest in the line. It is both a tangible and curious interest.

The paintings and drawings I seem to like most are ones which I feel reveal something to me, or, ones in which my experience can reveal something special about. Work in which something discoverable exists.

Poems can make more and more sense the more you read them, and paintings make sense when you just look. Perspectives change over time. So it seems to be, to me, the more you're looking the more you'll find out. If you are very small when you are looking you will likely see something else. If you are very tall when you are looking you will very likely see something else.

The paintings are just being themselves there, waiting for you.

- December 2006

History

Member for

1 year 26 weeks