Ma'at Mons

Artists

• Storm Tharp

Statement

This work arose from a desire for glorious change—an impulse that reflects not only my life as a citizen of the United States in the current era of perversity and seismic political unrest, but also the more personal and mysterious impulse to start over again in my work and impose a new chemistry in the studio. Never before have my exterior world and interior self been so inextricably connected. It has been virtually impossible for me not to make art about the time we live in.

The images in this exhibition are monotypes made with a five-by-ten-foot Ray Trayle printing press. In them, inky gestures are transformed into monumental signposts and heavenly bodies. It is my intention that these images represent a kind of Shangri-la in the mountains, an oasis on the horizon, a refuge from our present grim circumstances. Experimental in method and symbolist in vision, Ma’at Mons expresses an urgent yearning for goodness and truth.

I would like to extend special thanks to Matthew Letzelter, Yoshi Katai, and my colleagues at the Watershed Center for Fine Art Publishing and Research at PNCA, without whom this work would not have been possible.