COUNTING

The Counting exhibition is a container of works that reflect my studio stasis and quarantine during the 2020-21 world pandemic. The awkward unknowing of facts, science and outcome were experienced on the most intimate and public realms of our lives.

It was not until the fall of 2020 that my focus on painting images of porcelain flowers began. I have been sourcing and painting from enamel and porcelain objects with chinoiserie elements for years; as a form of experiencing memes that developed via world trading routes, but this was a different focus. The shift came after printing images from museum collections and auction sites of objects loaded with flowers, such as Qing Dynasty enamels, Coal Port, Meissen, Staffordshire and Sevres porcelain.

In my studio, I printed out an array of these images, flowers formed by another person’s hand, crafted for the purpose of domestic home usage. The paintings were compiled as a collage and montage, as I selected and painted the stylized flowers from different time frames and origins, grouping them together, free of their native source.

These works speak to me of a time-travel, of a place that is filled with a reverie of the domestic, of the hearth, of women’s work, of care, and carried me through a time of unknowing. The works are ladened with a repetitive action, of counting news clips, and conversations, of friends coping with COVID, and politics. I continued to turn to making flowers, and the symbolic act of sending flowers.

For me the flower motif moved from representing the domestic and the garden, to a space of bereavement and care, especially in a time when we were cut off from physically visiting our loved ones. These blossoms hold an emotive presence which transmitted within the works.

-Mary Ann Strandell, Spring 2021

SUITE 303 PROJECTS
526 West 26th Street
Suite 303, Space A
New York, New York 10001
June 8, 2021 - July 13, 2021