ART BY Cheryl Taves      artist cv   RE-ENCHANTMENT SERIES 1 RE-ENCHANTMENT SERIES 6 Re-ENCHANTMENT SERIES 4 CLEARING SERIES #5 CLEARING SERIES #3 LIFTING SERIES #1 ENTROPY #3 WHITE CALL #4 Entanglement Series Nest No.2 Nest No.1 Nest No.5 Flora I Evocation series No.7 Evocation series No.3 Evocation Series No.4 Decidedly Up Decidedly Down XTC Blessed Unrest I Blessed Unrest No.1 Nest No.3 Nest No.6 Evocation series No.5 Evocation Series No.2 2x2 Gathering the pieces - towing the line Evocation series No.6 Evocation Series No.1 Origins and Boundaries No.3 Origins and Boundaries No.5 Origins and Boundaries No.4 Origins and Boundaries No.7 Flora II Flora I Tendrils & Ties I Tendrils and Ties III Tendrils and Ties II Trapeze - Feeling the Pull Gathering the Pieces-Towing the Line Nowhere and Everywhere The Field of Silence Threshold I Think Tank Threshold II Evocation Series No.6 Nest No.7 UR 2 M       "There is only one great adventure and that is inwards toward the self". - Henry Miller Traces, evidence, markers all exist to lead the artist along a path of self-discovery and revelation. This body of work exists within my realm of experience. I paint what I am. I paint who I believe myself to be. As I deepen my process with the work, I discover parts of myself I had not yet revealed – to myself, or to others. It is this undisclosed history, these disowned parts of self, which I am most engaged with. In my work I am employing materials and methods that provoke these unconscious aspects of self to become visible. Through a layering of materials, mark making and erasure a history is developed that speaks of need, curiosity, identity and compulsion. The resulting internal imagery is ambiguous and gestural in nature, exploring what is conscious, revealed to us, as well as what is subconscious, or hidden from us. Congestions, smudges, lines and shapes are drawn with a variety of materials – charcoal, graphite, pastel or paint and then buried and revealed, over and over again. Color is set against the purity of white – white becoming the transformer – compelling, obliterating, perilous, cleansing and fresh. The traces of what was once there are revealed and hidden in an ongoing cycle of transformation, division and reconstruction, finally resting at the edge of recognition allowing the viewer to create their own narrative and personal meaning. This process based work is a response to my interest in the painting of the Abstract Expressionists like Cy Twombly, Joan Mitchell and Robert Motherwell, who attempted to allow their internal processes and emotions to take form in paint. From very early on in my art education I have been engaged with the ideas of automatism and the exploration of what comes forward when I attempt to work from my subconscious – taking myself out of myself – exploring the inner terrain of self in a new way and responding to an internal restlessness.