transparent stability

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aileen imperatrice

self portraits

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transparent stability

I have the live version of this painting included in the collection as an installation piece. The painting is 23.5” x 35”, a drawing primarily, on paper with various media. The subject is a wooden chair that I’ve draped fabric on. For the painting, I used this chair as a model and redrew it. The symbolic image of the chair is pretty close to the title I’ve given it. I love this chair, this is one of my favorite chairs I actually own in my home, and I brought it in to this exhibit because it’s something that like so many other things in my life are forms of stability, a very solid, well made chair, and I’ve used it many times and enjoy looking at it. But there are layers to something that can look so stable that still is not. And that’s the reason why I draped the fabric around it. I have these feelings, how even though I can feel stable about certain things, and I want to feel stable, and I can certainly use the best of my stability to deal with certain things, there’s still that transparency to any person, myself, definitely that, it doesn’t always work and the fabric for me represents that part of me where even though I can maybe appear more stable and work through different things to stay more stable, there’s always that vulnerable level and you can see through. Can people see through my stability? You’re hoping that you can basically have the thick skin to deal with anything that comes up, but you don’t know until you get to that situation how you will react. And I’ve been faced with that many times from childhood where I’ve been in a situation and you don’t realize until you’ve gotten into it and you look back and think my God, how did I get through that. But you deal with it at the time and you just kind of work through it. And so you have that stability, but at some times it really feels like it’s transparent, very easily moved.

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