Natasha Doyon
My main practice is as a painter; I paint large-scale figurative works with acrylic and oil. My work is inspired from texts and multiple visuals such as film stills, photographs and paintings. My focus has been drawing upon the body as an archeological site, a vessel that is layered with history, memories and traces of carnal experiences. My previous body of work was working with notions of femininity and identity as a performance by piecing together fictional figures from film stills, pornography and fashion photos. The focus was on the subjects being witnessed as objects in front of a one-way mirror (they are seen but cannot see you) the viewer is the voyeur. The subjects were artifacts that lined the wall of the gallery resembling trophies. The images were based on a poem by D.H. Lawrence titled Snake the poem is about wanting to possess someone and when not succeeding wanting to kill it; whereby the individual is struggling between his education and desire.
My current work is changing in scale, medium and subject. My current research is about melting portraits of powerful people to the point where they are indistinguishable save for some key elements that place the subject in a context that is familiar. The aim of the proposed works is to paint the gap between who these people were and how their image is perceived as a collective construct. I am cutting/pasting different source materials to create a metaphorical experience of the individual. I am interested in the subject meeting his monster or his/her own shadow, not solely feminine (previous work) but human and animal; and how memory distorts perception over time leaving organic traces that breakdown ideas of truth.
I am working with a quote by David Lynch “A distortion or abnormality always makes something happen in the brain. It makes you start looking at human beings in a different way – they start to make you dream.”
