Mandy Pierson – Artist Statement 2022
The end is a very unusual thing to experience, especially when the time in between affects you so intensely. I loathe ends for what they take but desire them for what they give, and nothing about that statement will ever change. This work is the product of fourteen years of thinking exactly like that. Even in the sections of memories I do still have from my childhood, I knew from the start I had a drive to continue. An anxious feeling like there’s always something more.
Being a studio-based artist requires a physical attachment between my mind, my hands, and the work. It’s one that takes the most and results in the rawest sense of feeling I can describe. Afterall, this is an investigation into the representation of coming down the morning after feeling so intensely your throat fills with words and breathing becomes a motor response. The work subjectifies the nature of an inward escape; the comforts of slipping into the definitions of an inscape, which can be defined as the unique inner nature of a person or even the environment around them as shown in works of art. It’s expressing a feeling in reaction to the aftermaths of trauma and how its rendering isn’t always on the side of realism. It’s an extension of how I view the subject through the obstruction of thoughts.
Even if I find myself at a loss to believing it myself, my work proves that I’m just like that; dying to capture what love, strength, and pain feel like. I’m working to prove that my childhood was a real philosophy in my head and that if I could capture it materially, I would finally feel connected.
The subject matter of my work can be broadly described as character design with world building concepts, something that is very much real to me. The figures, especially Lissette Chastain and Emerencz, appear in my work and are recognizable among years of paintings, drawings, and even in the written work I’ve curated all about them. In whole, this is the Infraworlds. The Infraworlds is a term I’ve adopted to both represent the side of my thoughts that constantly exist in this state of mind and how “Infra” is a term representing what lies below. So this world is what’s under the surface. Each piece explores the subject’s lives, desires for love and success, and in foresight, there’s always a metaphorical curtain drawn somewhere. There will always be something to uncover.