about my art generally: i use acrylic paints on paper that i usually find in thrift stores, and collage material that i find in magazines or discarded children’s books or that people give me. (i had long runs with cancelled postage stamps and cigar bands.) i paint ideas about the energies of the cosmos that usually include something recognizable and representative from nature.
turkey vulture portraits: i’m currently in a small town in southeastern colorado to which turkey vultures migrate and roost. it’s always an honor and thrill to see them gliding in thermals overhead or roosting in dead cottonwood trees during my daily morning walk in central park. i tend to paint them when this happens because they serve a significant purpose in nature’s cycles by eating, and thereby cleaning up carrion. i want to pay homage to this function of theirs, and to sort of forgive myself because i often, though as often unintentionally, function as a catalyst in others’ lives: a sort of lancing-the-boil-to-release-the-toxins-and-clean-things-out effect.
water beings: i’m a student of the ageless wisdom teachings that indicate that at other times in the evolution of the cosmos, humanity took other forms, as crocodiles, for instance. i was thinking about this and wondering about who might exist in ocean depths not yet explored or on unknown celestial bodies, and recalled the water sprites of egon schiele and gustav klimt, artists who were contemporaries and friends and whose work most stimulates me. this led me to create a small group of paintings of who i call water beings: entities with fish heads and limbs, and female bodies of the sort we’re currently accustomed to.
(c) Claudine Mussuto
literally stories 