Forster Art Complex Ross Gallery: April 22 - 26, 2024

show title on wall, statement, and flowers

Elements of life
By Alyssa Vyrva
2024

     "Elements of Life' is a collection of paintings and a sculpture that aims to represent elements of life and nature such as earth, air, water, and fire. As you walk through the gallery. you'll notice most of the paintings are portraits of animals, each animal represents a different element. Along with just representing the elements, it also represents something else such as emotions. The key goal of my gallery is to show the basis of elements through things that you find in nature aka animals.
     To represent air. I have painted portraits of animals you would usually find in the sky. Most of them being birds. They also have an underlying relationship with each bird representing something to do with death. From either being an omen of death, Part of what happens to the dead, the causation of death, and one of the portraits having a death in it. To represent water, I have painted creatures that you would find in the Water. You will also notice that they all have a very thick rough texture to them. I did this to show the movement of water. Each of these aquatic creatures has some semblance of the idea of calmness or peace. To represent Earth, I picked portraits of animals mostly found on land. Those animals are the giraffe, the kangaroo, and the fox. They're underlying representation is the emotion of happiness; either showing happiness or causing happiness. To represent fire, I created a sculpture of the female form. From it comes the black gooey ashes of what lies within us just exploding out from our centers.
     Why did I paint animal portraits for my show? Along with just loving animals also 1 find joy and peace in painting them. I like focusing on creating a single thing instead of a huge concept such as landscape painting. At one point before I decided to become an artist, I wanted to be an animal behaviorist. My favorite ones to paint are fluffy, or long-haired creatures. Because I get to do many layers of long textures of fur. As you walk through the gallery you will also know that there are flowers. I wanted to intensify more of life through nature by bringing nature inside. I did this by placing flowers in the gallery to help bring more life to the spaces.