Mercedes-Benz Financial Services

Shanna Van Maurik

Woman with Flowers in Her Hair

2011, Oil, acrylic, enamel and latex paint on canvas, 36"w x 72"h

I exploit the grotesquely unrealistic and posed images of models found in mass culture, both past and present. Through their appropriation and abstraction, I deface, deconstruct, and demonize my subjects, break them down and make them mine in an attempt to claim ownership over them. Like a little girl who destroys her once beloved Barbie doll, this process allows me to come to terms with the unresolved feelings of attraction and repulsion that I feel towards contemporary culture.

The viewer of my work is immersed in an alternate world where reality has been turned on its head and dipped in fluorescent paint, candy-coated in an attempt to mask its repulsive core. My subjects are the adulterated and tormented products of fairy tales and nightmares but attached to reality ever so delicately at the corners. Like a gingerbread house, my work draws the viewer in with seductive color and sumptuous textures before unexpectedly gobbling them up whole.

 

Shanna Van Maurik - Woman with Flowers in Her Hair

Leave a Comment

A Daimler Company