Stefanie Bales

As a novice artist, my pursuit was to portray objective reality- a literal representation of the world. Realizing that even when my intent was to render representationally, it was unavoidable that the result would be a depiction of a visual consciousness that is distinctly my own. My pursuit to portray an objective reality evolved into material that represented a more intuitive and emotional interpretation of the world. Perhaps there is no other way to see or understand the world than through our own A priori. Conversely, art tends to reveal a facet of the collective mind, and it is this contradiction that I am interested in studying. In my current collection of mixed media paintings, I am exploring the transitory state of reality - where figures and spaces move circuitously, where day and night exist in the same plane, and where our waking lives and lucid dreams collide. This takes shape in the form of landscapes representations which represent revelations of my own A priori, while simultaneously referencing visual idioms that are a part of a collective (sub)conscious. ​My paintings start with one piece of inspiration and then evolve intuitively as I respond to color, texture and subject. Whether the result references a playful daydream, a clairvoyant reality, or a corporeal conception, each is a pictorial conversation about truth and illiusion. Really, I am just interested in documenting the ephemeral experiences that make up the history of our lives, and of our dreams. www.stefaniebales.com