Cynthia Grow

Artist Statement

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My work is informed by literature, poetry, philosophy, film, and of course, my own experiences. I explore the interstices between art and language, engaging themes of memory, desire, and complex interpersonal relationships. I prefer to play on the idea of ambiguity. The liminal, the spaces in between. Of the absent or hidden, the imperceptible, the unspoken – the things felt but unseen. Perhaps a complicit glance, a brief and silent accord. Moments that transcend time, space, language, and culture. Memory. And what remains.

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Presence of Absence. Mystery. Silence. In both art and in life, I find what is hidden or obscured more compelling than the overt. I believe that hiding part of the world is inherent to the act of showing the world. For this reason, I prefer to leave ambiguity in my work, regardless the medium. Similar to the poet's sense of reduced language to communicate, creating mood and meaning where there may be no obvious story. Posing a question minus the answer, I offer the viewer to become an important determiner of meaning; allowing space to experience his own feeling, to arrive at his own conclusion.

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In the end, ambiguity is always the theme I seem to return to. Searching for something imperceptible. For something haunting in the work, perhaps in a place, maybe in the other, but mostly, I imagine, in myself.