Verna Brady

Artists are not artists because they "want" to be but rather because they MUST. Some inner necessity compels them to visualize their deepest feelings and emotions and to search for answers to the questions we all ponder: the how and why of Creation and Life.

My work begins by tapping my Subconcious for forms of deep, intuitive significance. Because the Subconscious has access to archetypal meanings of which the Conscious is unaware, these structures emerge primarily as abstract shapes. I do not "invent" these symbols nor calculate the end result of my statement. I am searching for forms not yet known. Chance and "accident" are important to me as basic tools for digging deeply into areas of my infinite Inner Space.

But my Conscious is the ultimate organizer. The "accidents" are wiped out if they are not significant; the forms are weighed judged and changes until they are expressive of both inner feelings and coherent visual expression.

A shift from my conscious to my subsoncious continues as I paint until the two forces mysteriously come together. From that point on, I know where the painting is going and will know when it is done.

My mediums are acrylic on canvas; watercolor, monotype and acrylic on paper. My use of collage materials (strips and shapes of canvas, paper, cheesecloth, sand) often seem necessary to my artistic statement: there is tactile sensuousness resulting from the incorporation of these elements into the paint which I feel is important.

The circle and the sphere, which have no beginning and no end, have emerged in my work as symbols of Being as well as metaphors for expressing the Infinity of the Universe Without and the Universe Within. This and other geometric forms and lines also add structure to the more lyrical movement from my inner promptings and bring the wortk into a state of dynamic equilibruim.

By combining this Right Brain/Left Brain activity with the visual and expressive possibilities of the medium, I allow my work to become a window through which the mysteries of the Universe Without and the Universe Within may pass, mingle and become one.

 

Verna Brady

[note other statements are scattered throughout the site, depending on the subject.]

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