Linda Darby’s Artist Statement

                                                                                                 

Painting is a drama: dragging, dripping, blotting and daubing acrylic paint onto the canvas, exploring various methods for applying acrylic paint and media, structuring the layered surface.  Outlines and swatches of colour are interspersed with pointillist gestures.  Fuzzy patches of paint mix with doodles and pattern. I see painting as the act of narrating.  Adding washesof colour, I pare down the variables so that the ribbons of pigment resting on the paintings’ surface mingle and conjure up images.   Reading, music,all visual sources, film, and television imagery are subsumed into my
paintings.  I walk through the surfaces of paint until images from real andimagined worlds manifest.

Fantasy creatures wrench themselves free and emerge from the paint. They assert themselves through the applications of paint to imply form, that may be their creation or their erosion. Some are emphatic in their flatness; others, rich with illusionist space, have a sense of presence and unease.  These creatures embody a kind of instability of representation as they appear or disappear.

My own interpretations of the many plays and fascinating stories told about the ancient feminine can be seen in this series of paintings.The Egyptian Bastet, the goddess of joy, music, and dancing is depicted as a cat.  From Aeschylus’ tragic play, I portray Queen Clytemnestra’s dream in which she gives birth to a snake that draws blood, as well as milk, from her breasts. Sea-Goddess Scylla is shown with the upper body of a nymph, and the tail of a fish.  Aided by suggestive titles, my paintings instil a quasi-narrative in the viewer.  

These paintings on this website can be viewed at “The Gallery At The Mac”, November 21, 2011 through February 22, 2012, at McPherson Playhouse, #3 Centennial Square, Victoria, B.C. Please call (250) 361-0800.