Artists Adopt Survivors
Artist’s Statement: J. Kennedy
My works in this show and in general share the common thread of being non-narrative or illustrative, instead exhibiting a flavor more cryptic and poetic. Four works were prepared for this exhibit in three very different styles, two of what I call “white paintings, one representational oil painting, and one sculptural marionette.
Like Leonardo Da Vinci reading the stains of his studio walls as great and monumental battle scenes, my “white” works are meant to subtly release images that seem almost fleeting or on the verge of dematerialization.
The small oil painting is not a portrait of a particular person as were the “white” paintings, it is a portrait of the Holocaust. Mankind, humanity falls into the background, indiscernible from its imposed surroundings, Stubbornly through it resists, walks on maintaining its identity.
The sculptural marionette is the most straightforward representational portrait of the pieces I made for this project. It is a classic “character” puppet, which typically have a disproportionately large head and exaggerated features. The puppet is antiquated and time worn, scared from experience and circumstance. It is caught in liquid time, frozen in a static yet dynamic posture, its cords cut.
I hope that my works as a whole in this show are not perceived as being dark or pessimistic, the tendency when dealing with atrocity is to produce the atrocious. Working with Mr. Roth as a subject, quickly you realize his is a success story, not one without loss and its share of horrors, but in the end a story of perseverance and success.
Without the dark one cannot perceive the light.