Tara DonaghyCreating art is a sensual experience for me. I want to explore the eroticism and wonder that exists in the everyday and the everyperson. I feel that with the influence of popular culture and media, our perceptions of beauty have become very narrow, however I believe that they can be altered. My work plays with those perceptions, using surface and content, insides and outsides, shells and guts. Using various forms of human-scale sculptural work, I am using my own form - far from our cultural ideal - to push the boundaries of those perceptions of beauty. These works touch on a personal struggle to take control of my own destiny and to shed the pressures for perfection. My work over recent years has become a journey and exploration of superficial vs. internal beauty. Is it the lovely shell that represents beauty or the phenomenal life that inhabits it? I have come to the conclusion that it is the slime-covered invertebrate - undulating and vibrating with life and sensual energy - which holds the wonder for me…regardless of the sparkling iridescence of its shell. I want to dig deeper…to go beyond the surface and seduce the viewer into a world where all things have beauty and worth if we would only look. I received a Bachelor of Fine Arts (High Honours) at Brock University, in St. Catharines, Ontario. I have participated in six Open House shows with the Enriched Bread Artists since 1997. |