Exhibition Objects of Affection will be on display from June 24, 2021 – August 7, 2021
“One of my earliest memories was in my great-Grandmother’s house. She had an entire wall filled with shelves of figurines. I was fascinated by these tiny porcelain objects that were strange and exaggerated versions of the animals they represented. My family moved often throughout my childhood and my possessions became a much needed source of stability in my constantly shifting world. I began collecting small porcelain horses and unicorns from garage sales and secondhand shops that I frequented in Milwaukee with my grandmother. I have always been interested in the past lives of the objects in these places – and enjoyed scouring the remnants of peoples’ possessions for these mass-produced treasures.
In recent years, my desire to collect figurines was rekindled, which led me to begin using them as subjects for this series of paintings. I was interested in playing with the boundaries between the genres of still life and portraiture, and high and low art. I am also interested in exploring the limits of representation. Making this work is like a visual telephone game – they are paintings of painted porcelain objects. Many of the figurines
are so distorted and exaggerated that sometimes it becomes hard to determine the animals they originally reference. I am intrigued by our ability to discern what these abstracted forms represent.
Within my paintings, I focus on subtly shifting color, composition, scale, and light within the still lives I paint directly from until I am content with how they impact the personality of the figurines. The figurines I am most drawn to are strange, comical, and sometimes slightly discomforting. In some of these works I intend to heighten the personalities of the figurines, and at other times I’m looking to completely alter the inherent qualities of these inanimate objects.” – Cassie Marie Edwards
