Shadow, Hold Your Breath

Artists

• Justin L'Amie

Statement

Shadow, Hold Your Breath

As is true with so much in life, my art could never exist alone. Music and art history are always with me. Things so deep and connected going back to my formation as an artist and as a person. From the strange and dark beauty of Odilon Redon and Goya, the sublime revelry and ecstatic joy of the music of Brazil and Cabo Verde, to the careful intention and odes to nature of Ohara Koson and the NW Mystics.

The title of this show comes from a poem I came across recently from Emily Dickinson called “There’s a Certain Slant of Light”. While the entire poem is not of actual consequence to these particular paintings, a certain moment in it kept returning to me while I was thinking of my recent output and state of mind:

Shadows – hold their breath –

That single line I felt really spoke to me as I was trying to understand where these works came from. I thought about how these paintings came from a dark place. I wondered how they came out so peaceful and optimistic. I realized they were healing me. They were sadness sublimated into a definite love. Flowers grown from moonless night and days where the sun was nowhere to be seen. Blooms so assured to grow from darkness and loss. What a path they give toward the light. Finding trust in the fragrance and hope in the generosity of nature. Loving flowers.

My only real intention is to make an art that is selfless. An art that is of service to a viewer who is open to it. An art that is not at all about me, or my struggles but about a place and a feeling that is always fleeting and eludes definition.