I am influenced by qualities in the environment such as the flow and displacement of water, the flicker and reflection of light, the substance and weight of matter, and the thread and fabric of fiber. Qualities relatable to aerial topography, geographic contours, or bodily and objective forms can be found in my work. The design and order of nature and its relationship to the action and thought of human culture fascinates me. I am interested in the unique characteristics of the environment of my lifelong home in the Southern United States in the Great Smoky Mountains of Gatlinburg, Tennessee and exploring the properties of historical and contemporary daily life of the area in my art. The dense ecosystem of flora, fauna, forest, rivers, valleys, and mountains call settlers and visitors to the foothills. As generations pass, the natural and organic meets the artificial and man made, where the simplicity of the past and domesticity mingles with the bustle of modernity and technology to create a distinct juxtaposition.
In my paintings, I create luminous, atmospheric space with color and organic shapes to generate a push and pull between abstraction and representation. In my works, I utilize textured surfaces and materiality, to play with the area in between the second and third dimensions, the place where flat starts to become form. I begin my process by pouring, splattering, squirting, and throwing paints along with cutting, ripping, and tearing papers, fibers, and wires. Then, I assemble and arrange an organized collage of materials as I methodically and intuitively add and remove layers until an aesthetic resolution is found. Using tactile materials and spatial relationships, along with atmospheric light and color, I construct abstract spaces that are evocative of landscapes, figures, or objects. Abstraction allows me to form a visual language to reflect my personal thoughts and memories. My paintings are philosophical in nature and I break down, blur, and reorganize formal elements into expressive marks so that the spaces in my paintings become suggestive of specifics from the world while remaining mysterious. Representation allows me to connect abstract thoughts with recognizable images to communicate personal yet collectively relative ideas with others. One is directed to the paintings representational topic while allowing breath for the viewer’s own personal interpretation of the piece.
By combining qualities of these techniques, the flexibility of abstraction, with the directness of the culturally recognizable, my hope is the viewer can sense the description of the familiar in the colors, lines, shapes, and compositional space and get lost in their unique mental response to the expressive mark making and reorganized information. When one experiences my art, my dream is the viewer will conjure his or her own meanings, memories, and connections to my work, to art, and to the recognition that everyone can understand creativity because everyone is capable of creation and already does it in numeral ways everyday just by observing and doing within the world. I want my work to nudge the viewer into their own mental process of thought and memory while provoking them to consider their connection to the art, to themselves, to others, and to the natural world.
Layla Galyon
In my paintings, I create luminous, atmospheric space with color and organic shapes to generate a push and pull between abstraction and representation. In my works, I utilize textured surfaces and materiality, to play with the area in between the second and third dimensions, the place where flat starts to become form. I begin my process by pouring, splattering, squirting, and throwing paints along with cutting, ripping, and tearing papers, fibers, and wires. Then, I assemble and arrange an organized collage of materials as I methodically and intuitively add and remove layers until an aesthetic resolution is found. Using tactile materials and spatial relationships, along with atmospheric light and color, I construct abstract spaces that are evocative of landscapes, figures, or objects. Abstraction allows me to form a visual language to reflect my personal thoughts and memories. My paintings are philosophical in nature and I break down, blur, and reorganize formal elements into expressive marks so that the spaces in my paintings become suggestive of specifics from the world while remaining mysterious. Representation allows me to connect abstract thoughts with recognizable images to communicate personal yet collectively relative ideas with others. One is directed to the paintings representational topic while allowing breath for the viewer’s own personal interpretation of the piece.
By combining qualities of these techniques, the flexibility of abstraction, with the directness of the culturally recognizable, my hope is the viewer can sense the description of the familiar in the colors, lines, shapes, and compositional space and get lost in their unique mental response to the expressive mark making and reorganized information. When one experiences my art, my dream is the viewer will conjure his or her own meanings, memories, and connections to my work, to art, and to the recognition that everyone can understand creativity because everyone is capable of creation and already does it in numeral ways everyday just by observing and doing within the world. I want my work to nudge the viewer into their own mental process of thought and memory while provoking them to consider their connection to the art, to themselves, to others, and to the natural world.
Layla Galyon