AUDREY CLARENDON

Trained in oil paints, I started my visual art journey with portraits commissioned

by family friends in grade school. Since then, my creative pursuits have evolved, allowing me to root out intersections between oil painting and fields like psychology and to explore other forms of media like film, sculpture, textile-work and photography. I am most drawn to stories of vulnerability and cycles of growth/recovery in the black feminine experience. This most often shows up as compositions depicting black women in aerial suspension, caught in either a moment of transcendence or a fall from grace. My works tend to originate from moody, experimental music as I find it helps me explore feelings and images that may feel unapproachable or distant. Music allows me to translate those feelings into an image, as if I were scoring a movie scene in reverse. To flesh out compositions I draw on historical symbology of witchcraft, mysticism, spirituality and my Antillean heritage. I am also a training astrophysicist, which anchors me to a bigger-picture, cosmic view of art-making. My work, thus, often features spiral structures that call up galaxies and elements that defy physical laws, such as flying or floating. By the actual making stage, my composition is largely finalized, but I continue to investigate on the canvas, in the editing room, etc.

 

I am interested in how these black feminine characters interact with the worlds I

put them in. Specifically, I am drawn to the ambiguity between recognizing confidence or discomfort, vulnerability or fear, weightlessness or freefall. On the transcendence side, my characters are often in active resistance as they defy gravity, asking the question: what could we be without burden? On the other hand, I also discuss oppressive structures, on the institutional and interpersonal scale alike, and how they can irreparably damage those with less power. The black woman, an example of the intersection between multiple marginalizing forces, makes a fitting and personal muse to embody this experience. My works, then, serve to illuminate the struggles of marginalized peoples and to depict what true and full liberation could feel like.