SHAANEA MENDIS

ARTIST STATEMENT 

In my 'cellscapes' series , the inspiration is born from intricate patterns that capture my eye in our everyday and natural environment. From wrinkly textures of skin, finger prints, veins of leaves, to barks of trees and other marks left on surfaces naturally through time. The intricate textural patterns, which others may take for granted, is magnified to me. I store an imaginary database of these marks in memory which I put down on paper or canvas. Starting from somewhere, not knowing where it will lead, without a pre-concieved result in mind. The end product is something bizarrely unique to me, organic in nature, enabling my audience an experience that begins at the artist’s eye and ends at the viewer’s mind.

The use of RUST stains in my work, evolved from the pen & ink cellscapes. The process of rusting provides a further element of chance, as external factors play a role in determining the outcome, bringing the work closer to nature’s way of treatment and creating marks on a surface.

Both these methods have a meditative quality about them, both in the process of creation and viewing the final work. My aim is to have my viewer reflect on the notion that we are all, and everything around us, made up of the tiniest particles that is not even sometimes visible to the human naked eye, yet all an integral and part of a much larger picture.