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Artwork
Pictures
#gold
#mosaics
#portraits
#Tawny Chatmon
“Iconography/A Hopeful Reality” (2022-2023), 24k gold leaf, 22k moon gold, acrylic paint, semi-precious stones, and different combined media on archival pigment print, 56 x 42 inches. All pictures © Tawny Chatmon, shared with permission
“At any time when I take into consideration the longer term, I take into consideration my kids and the truth that I really feel that the longer term doesn’t belong to me; it belongs to them,” says Tawny Chatmon (beforehand). “The work I’m creating now could be what I’m manifesting for his or her current and future.”
Usually centering her portraiture on adolescents, Chatmon is visionary, imagining a time when kids are “residing in peace, being protected, being protected, being freed from stereotypes, residing freely and joyously, being handled gently by the world.” This dream is rooted in a long-held need for younger Black individuals to be acknowledged as inherently helpful and vital, visualized by means of the artist’s signature glimmering elaborations.
Harking back to Gustav Klimt’s works and pastiglia, or low-relief decorations, of Fifteenth-century Italian artists, Chatmon’s Remnants and Pastoral Scenes sequence overlay portraits with gold leaf, acrylic paint, semi-precious stones, and different mixed-media. The gilded additions typically cloak clothes and typically the backdrop, whereas the works retain the unique photographic depiction of the sitter’s face and limbs.
Remnants comprises cut-and-pasted scraps from the artist’s early work, and Pastoral Scenes positions the figures in opposition to distant landscapes. Each sequence, although, honor ancestral ties and emphasize the necessity to break away from outdated modes of being. “My work is an attractive resistance just because it exists,” she says. “Existence, by definition, is the state of being alive or being actual, and regardless of early depictions of Black our bodies as background or ‘different’ in Western artwork, whereas primarily centering whiteness, we’re actual. We at all times have been.”
“Iconography/In honor of the sacred divinity that exists inside us” (2023), 24k gold leaf, paper, acrylic on archival pigment print, 47 x 35 inches
Chatmon takes an identical method in her ongoing Iconography sequence, which evokes Byzantine-era works that depict non secular figures by means of dense mosaics. “These visible declarations have been used to help the observer in specializing in all issues sacred and have been seen extra as literal prayers than artwork. Believed to function conduits to the divine, every was meticulously crafted by an iconographer embarking on a journey of prayer and meditation,” she shares.
Her items draw on this custom by means of swaths of gold tesserae that transcend the earthly. In “A Hopeful Reality,” Chatmon fashions flowing, metallic clothes for 2 younger women, who embrace in entrance of a tiled backdrop with blue, floral filigree. One other work, “In honor of the sacred divinity that exists inside us,” options the artist’s daughter sporting a gown draped over her shoulders and a robe with a portrait of Harriet Tubman close to her coronary heart. “Simply as Byzantine icons function home windows to the religious realm, might my icons function technique of sending gratitude to our ancestors and a connection to those that helped form our lives all through historical past,” the artist says.
And the devotional nature of those early Roman works isn’t misplaced on Chatmon. For every bit, she pre-determines what she’s hoping to speak and when full, considers “what I would like the work to do as soon as shared with others by saying a prayer over the work and setting intentions.”
Chatmon presently has a limited-edition print out there by means of Artwork + Tradition to help The Final Resort Artist Retreat, a residency for Black creatives. She additionally has work in a number of exhibitions opening within the coming weeks, together with group reveals at Galerie Myrtis in Baltimore, the Museum of the African Diaspora in San Francisco, and Florida State College’s Museum of Nice Arts. You may comply with her newest endeavors on Instagram.
“Remnants/I Was Born to Stand within the Gentle” (2020-2022), 24k gold leaf, paper, acrylic, different combined media on archival pigment print, 63 x 41 inches
“Pastoral Scenes/Ralisha” (2021-2022), 24k gold leaf, acrylic, semi-precious stones, thermoplastic polymer resin, and different combined media on archival pigment print, 56 x 36 inches
“Bridgetower Frieze” (2021), 24k gold leaf and acrylic on archival pigment print, 40 x 30 inches
“Remnants/Aunt Mattie’s Beloved Frock” (2021), 24k gold leaf, paper, acrylic on archival pigment print, 30 x 24 inches
“Iconography/And All Generations Shall Name Us Blessed (earlier than completion)” (2022), 24k gold leaf, paper, abalone shell, and acrylic on archival pigment print, 44 x 36 inches
#gold
#mosaics
#portraits
#Tawny Chatmon
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