Artist Statement: Humans, Nature and Everything in Between
When I create, I aim to express the nature of the human condition; life, death, lust, love, awe, anxiety, control, and its loss. I became engrossed in the human form with all of its life and anxiety. The discomfort in isolation, being stuck in a crowd, the struggle for control, and following movements. Being isolated, you find an appreciation for the company of people, and how being in a crowd, you find a like for being isolated. This struggle is a constant push and pull.
The struggle for control can be in many of my works comes to be through compositional relations. What is a better way to give me control than by the unforgivable mark of a pen from an unsure hand? To take it back through the power of will or a tip of a knife into linoleum? Taking space knowing fully well it's not coming back, much like a moment spent with a lover, as our time slips through each other’s hands.
I choose to depict humans and nature with primarily female forms for their intrinsic beauty and its symbolism. The images I use all talk to each other through the repetition and augmentation of curvilinear lines that weave the subjects together. The female form harmonizes with the curvature of the others forms in the compositions. Women embody humanity’s strength/ love/compassion; they are artists chosen by nature, creating new life. Unfortunately, society wants to view women as submissive and delicate objects even though they endure more pain than men could imagine. Women are indeed where our strengths as a species lie—giving us our sons and daughters.
While feminism plays a significant role in my artwork, the content focuses on the struggle between society and nature, the mind and the body, the individual and society, and life and death. The duality of nature breeds chaos, and out of the confusion comes harmony. We have become so synthetic that the people we look up to as role models have teams of people behind them, writing their words and pushing their brand. That's all our society is. A brand! America is the land of the free! Where the shackles we wear are the numbers in a machine. It's the struggle for air, entrapped in the muck of the industrial swaps, flooding with grime while we wait for nature to correct itself that guides my work. My work analyzes the relationship between the human condition, nature, and the human condition as a part of nature.
-Brad Vaccaro