• My recent paintings began not with the zero of a blank canvas but with the ready-made imagery of store bought fabrics. I use men’s leisurewear as a medium, appropriating its understated palette’s attempt to evoke a timeless androgyny. The fabrics that I choose arise form my relationships to supposedly disparate aesthetic functions, i.e. modern architecture, suburban interior decoration, contemporary fashion and the historical avant-garde. My paintings are selections of fabric that are mediated by an action. Reacting to these fabrics, by cutting, painting over, or folding, defines my understanding of these various cultural realms. Although the fabrics suggest to me what actions to take, those actions contradict the logic of the mass produced image. However, the negation that is suggested by painting over the fabric becomes complicated when the imagery of the background exerts its influence on my decisions. The work then becomes a negotiation between visual object and idea. My practice incorporates the experimental idea of making decisions based on negative criteria for the work. This process becomes a discovery rather than an aspiration to something that may already exist.

  • Heather Guertin