How To Be Alone

Becky McMaster

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(b. 1989)

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HOW TO BE ALONE; 2010

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oil + mixed media on masonite

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48 x 65 in. (121.9 x 165.1 cm)

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ARTIST STATEMENT

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In my recent work I have been developing imagery based from family videos created in the 1960s that I pause and photograph. I then selectively choose and edit the photographs that I have taken from the videos and use the images as a source for my paintings. 1 am most interested in the photographs that capture transition points in the videos where the footage is degraded, raw and unedited. Although my work is influenced and driven by photography, the paintings are not realistic representations; they are ambivalent, conveying feelings of familiarity and nostalgia as well as an atmosphere that is indefinite, where places, time and memories transcend understanding. The imagery is fragmented, blurred and distorted containing areas of subtle texture and delicate skeins of colour that build to dense areas of detail or evaporate to nuanced atmosphere. Blurring the line between abstraction and representation, the paintings are hazy, moving back and forth between the solid and the fleeting, as if the imagery will materialize and become pronounced in a definite form. Lines divide the pictorial plane, separating multiple areas of colliding imagery. The surface is a vital component of the work; 1 am constantly examining, editing and reworking the surface to create an atmosphere that is transient, fleeting and seductive.