ART - About - Ethos | eilee george

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Artist Statement/Ethos: My art portrays the dichotomy of my being: both the inner and the outer worlds. There are dark passages and paths of light that intertwine throughout life, and my body of work as a whole reveals this, as well as all of the discovery, pain, confusion and resolutions that occur along the way. The tales these works tell are as diverse as life, and the common thread shared by all is the utterly exposed honesty they embrace.

After a year rife with personal tragedies – the loss in my arms of a parent and sibling to two different cancers, a miscarriage, a debilitating accident with a long rehabilitation and a few layoffs in the midst of all this – I began to probe more into the psyche within – and with the very act of creation, I exorcised my demons of fear, grief, anger, death, disease and other things that challenged me during that tragic time. My works prior to my current series were direct expressions of these tests; contrastingly, my current works are proactive assertions of my will to survive, transcend and learn from those challenges. My art truly became “art therapy”.

In art and life there must be balance. My faith led me to find the silver lining, and I found it; it was with me all along…He was with me all along, and I had to open my eyes to see the clear proof. Not long after the aforementioned traumas, it helped me to face my own cancer diagnosis with a peace and purpose I never would have thought possible before I was saved. So many things happened in such an intricate pattern that only made sense in hindsight. Each event prepared me for the next. There is no guarantee life is easy – but one can choose to learn and grow from every experience, and prioritize what is really important, and appreciate what one has.

My love affair with nature has been a source of inspiration to me all my life, and I cherish times hiking, camping, cultivating my nature photography, and interpreting the world through new eyes and new appreciation for the small things. I aim to focus on the life force both in my subject matter and in my own creative process: broken down, there is a particulate form in all nature – each piece of matter is a seething sea of busy atoms with furiously spinning electrons; each ray of light is a stream of speeding photons. A parallel can be drawn to the way a digital image is broken down to individual pixels – it all relates to Gestalt theory in which the whole is greater than the sum of its parts – atoms join to form molecules, systems, organisms, relationships, and worlds. I developed my brushstroke technique to reflect all of this structure, vibration, activity and connection, yet reveal and emphasize in that same technique that these images were created not by any computed process but by a living, breathing, imperfect human being with the same divinely composed particulate essence – one who was broken down only to resurface anew, triumphant.

If you have more questions, try my FAQ page, or contact me via my Contact page.

♥ – Eilee