Audra ART
In my Art works I explore personal meanings and experiences of braids, weaving and knots. This topic appeared to me naturally and related to my personal life experience - I unconsciously started drawing broken knots. It was like a ritualistic act of severing ties, and the imagery unconsciously, deeply and naturally testified that the knots and fabric had a meaning of maintaining/not maintaining a connection. Later, in my work, images created on the principle of weaving appeared one after the other. I started exploring and experimenting with different media in the action of weaving. For me, it is about finding and maintaining a relationship, interweaving personally, philosophically and existentially. Because of the recurrence of this image in my works, I began to search for its meanings. I discovered that various mythologies interpret the world as a fabric or web; the universe is believed to have been created by spinning or weaving. The main themes that run through the rituals of early cultures are the creation of
the world, the establishment of various rules and schemes, and above all the definition of blood and marital relations through the use of crafts (weaving, pottery, blacksmithing, construction, cooking, etc.) which are closely related to ritualistic actions.
There are many studies that analyse the relationship between weaving technologies as a semantic code, a kind of "technological gestalt", and traditional Indo-European ceremonial poetry, folk tales, mythologies and holistic understanding of the world.
I also realized, that my creative process was influenced by the Art Therapy approach to
creativity. I am an artist and an art therapist. In the context of art therapy, spontaneity and experiencing "here and now" are of great importance in the creative process. When I start to paint, I see only an initial abstract idea, recent experience or generalization on a blank canvas or paper. I start with spontaneous movement or free-flowing paint that creates its own paths on its own. Then I look for randomly formed shapes, surfaces, and the painting itself dictates my path step by step: what line, color or surface to create next... It's like a dialogue between me and the painting, which ultimately expresses the themes of the painting that inhabit my subconscious.
The art techniques I use in the works of this exhibition, the act of doing it, has meaning for me. Pouring paint in streams – represents for me the idea of letting go of something, let it flow... Tearing paper and gluing - for me is like deconstructing myself or changing my attitude. I associate different experiences with gluing different layers of paper. In these works, the background of the work was important to me and imbued it with an important meaning. I painted, flexibly used the batik technique, mobilised the decoupage technique using glue and creating multiple layers. The background in these works for me has the meaning of our life experience. We all have our own stories, different experiences that live within us like layers, thus creating our uniqueness.