Grace Bromley

Lives and works in Richmond, VA, USA

Artist statement

My practice investigates the way individuals in the West seek self awareness, meaning and enlightenment. Taking influence from Catholic Iconography, Greco-Roman Myth, and familial histories, I weave together atmospheric worlds where archetypal figures of valor and achievment can be fragile. I aim to reclaim the narrative of self discovery from an individualistic pursuit, to a complicated amalgamation of forces coming together to create an explosion of consciousness. There is a feeling of sublimity, of an epic storm, a realization at the moment these figures are created. According to Melanie Klein, “Fusion” is the moment when an individual is inseparable from its environment, it is also the process of combining many scents in order to form a full perception of something.” I contrast the idea of fusion in terms of process and materiality, to the current view of figurative painting which feels isolated, separate, solid. The permeability of my work stands to state that being and feeling is transient and ever changing. They call attention to painting's failure to truly mimic life by the of freezing a moment. There is intentional movement and momentum in these works, there is not single moment more important than the last. I use vaporous figures dissolved in atmosphere as anthropomorphisms to explore this universal divide between the interior dream and the exterior or collective dream, using marks on surface to sublimate these questions around perception of self, which posses...

Artwork