STATEMENT BY DAPHANE PARK

Travel allows for an interpretive distance, while inspiring a desire to enter into the details and nuances of a place or culture. On a more personal level, travel causes a perceptual shift based on the experience of seeing and interpreting something new. In artmaking, this state is essential, if not inherent to the process. For this reason, I have sought to live and wok in many different geographical and cultural contexts, where discovery, immersion, interpretation, and finally memory are condensed.

My studio practice involves oil painting, watercolor painting, mixed media, drawing, printmaking, and photographic processes. My current work includes oil paintings on shaped wood panels. Each takes months of attention to detail working in layers and glazes. The paintings examine how landscape is perceived, used and translated throughout the history of image making. My work has evolved into two separate but related modes: one that discusses the landscape topographically, and one that investigates the more microscopic details extracted from the aerial landscapes.

The arrows are the topographical context from which leaves and pods are extracted – extractions that act as memories or a legend for understanding the map. The intent is for the experiences of viewing these works to parallel the complexity of travel whereby one seeks to observe and interpret, participate and immerse.