Steven Lieu

Painting

My interest in with working with the subject of Death stems from my questioning of our typical human-emotional-reactions when viewing artworks involving the macabre and morbid. My decision to try and disassociate the emotional aspects of death from my drawings, to focus on the aesthetics is a way for me to create a blockage and disruption of emotions. A challenge that I give myself in order to produce drawings with the traditional subject of Death in a contemporary art world...while using traditional mediums.

The images I use are curated and appropriated from books with different subjects containing photo documentations of death. And after selecting an image to work from; I then distort it by cropping, fragmenting and removing areas within it. The addition of charcoal, ink and gesso; and their versatility for mark-making allows me to create images where the figures are not easily identifiable/readable as dead. Furthering the original context of the reference image from the final drawing; in hopes of blocking and/or disrupting emotional reactions to my drawings.

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With all of the deaths that we are witnessing and hearing about around the world, and for some experiencing it personally. I would like to acknowledge that death is an emotional experience for some. But after our mourning process may we celebrate the lives of those who we have lost.

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