STATEMENT

YVONNE DUBOURDIEU ASA 

I am a contemporary expressionist painter working in various media but mostly in oil. My work uses a wide variety of styles and impulses of painterly language to explore the space and visual experiences of painting. Through my art practice, I deconstruct and reinterpret my life experiences and life interests from photographs, memory and imagination, to build bold and intriguing paintings that resonate with emotional and atmospheric narratives and embrace the complexities of our human experience. 

This current body of work looks at the dichotomy between strength and weakness within ourselves and the unease that manifests when our vulnerabilities are laid bare through heightened uncertainty. Now, in the light of a global pandemic, when our social and cultural structures have been so deeply shaken, how do we grow, repair, rebuild? How do were define purpose and meaning when we are living through an ongoing state of crisis? 

I have been interested in exploring that place of disquiet we go to as humans where we sit with the familiar trespasser of unwanted thoughts, to face our personal demons, self-doubts and irrational fears. In particular, I have been looking at the blurry space where mending takes place when we yield to thoughts of darkness and surrender to our imperfect mind and let light in. I see this mysterious internal space as a necessary and very human place for repair and growth. 

I am building storied, other-worldly environments that reflect these feelings of disquiet; narratives permeated with visual fragments of the familiar, of memory, of dreams and of fantasy. Into this world of disparate elements, feminine character/s are immersed, ambiguously falling, floating, rising or simply suspended or frozen, in a backdrop that feels both chaotic and serene at the same time.