Artist Statement
LYNN DEWART
ARTIST STATEMENT
I am a mixed media artist and autodidact making story teller dolls honoring myth and folklore, goddess and god, shadow and light, the mundane and the sacred in the totality of the human experience. My figures heal wounds, open rooms too long dark and forboding, beckon the beyond and expand one’s vision. I welcome mystery, embrace questioning, throw myself passionately into life and need artmaking to survive.
I began my first little cloth doll in conjunction with therapy to realize, name and recover from trauma. I found this sculptural experience powerful, satisfying and playfully magical. I became able to communicate so much more than words could embody and set out to people the universe I wanted to and do live in, where vulnerability can be our greatest gift.
I make abstract human forms because it pleases me. They have pooled my talents, extracted my memories, captured my essence and accompanied me through deep, lengthy depressions, tragedy and loss, agony, pain and sorrow, suicidal tendencies and towards a glimmer of hope, through monumental and incremental changes and into moments of absolute bliss.
When my niece, Allison Dewart age 19, was killed by a drunk driver just 15 months after a close friend lost her 14 year old daughter in a tragic auto accident, my life and art were permanently altered. I created my first Bone Dolls to honor the passing of young shining stars and to create shrines and memoriums, beginning with my Bone Girl Music Boxes.
I costume, bead, make ATCs, alter books and teach as well.
There are many, many faces of me and I continue to explore and reveal layer by layer, bead by bead, bone by bone.
My influences are Van Gogh, Miro, De Marco, Kahlo, marstokyo, Cornell and Marcie Stone.
There are 2 Comments to "Artist Statement"
Hello, Will you be having any classes befor June? Please put me on your list, I have seen your work and love it! I work with children and also hope to incorporate some ideas in to our shadow box work (scaled way down) as well as create a piece for my family.
Enjoy
Kristi
Hi Kristi. I am in the midst of finals and art-based research so no classes scheduled in the near future. I am booking some doll workshops in Los Angeles and the Bay are for early spring.
Thank you for your interest. Assuming from your email, we must live close as I am in the 92103 area, too, Lynn