EMILY GILLCRIST
  • About
  • Paintings 2020
    • Step Lightly 2011-2019
    • Night Series 2010
    • Point + Form 2010
  • Resume
  • CV
  • Vital Thought
  • About
  • Paintings 2020
    • Step Lightly 2011-2019
    • Night Series 2010
    • Point + Form 2010
  • Resume
  • CV
  • Vital Thought
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Difference, 9" x 12", mixed media on wood panel.
Self, 8"x10", ink and paper on wood panel.
Flesh, 9" x 12", mixed media on wood panel.
Looking Glass, 8"x10"; wood glue, acrylic, mirror styrene on wood panel.
I mind, 9" x 12", mixed media on wood panel.
Patience, 9"x12"; wood glue, acrylic, and sand on wood panel.
Difference & Identity
These pieces explore identity with reference to psychoanalytic notions of sexual difference, memory traces, and the dynamic unconscious. They also involve existential themes including uncanniness, guilt, and anxiety. These topics are dealt with through an exploration of materials and imagery. Wood glue provides waxy flesh-like filler on collaged figures and body parts, its color and texture creating an odd imitation of the warmth and volume of flesh. Glue's typical "holding" function refers to my thesis work, wherein I draw parallel between Donald Winnicott's psychoanalytic concept of "Holding Space" and Martin Heidegger's phenomenological concept of "Being-in-the-world". Put simply, it refers to one's developed ability and constant need to "hold one's self together", to (largely unconsciously) maintain one’s sense of self and reality.

This series originated as a project assigned by Mira Cantor at Northeastern University. During her course on figure drawing we engaged the idea of masculinity and femininity. I have reworked and expanded my original concept after being influenced by my thesis work with Alan Bass at the New School for Social Research.

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  • About
  • Paintings 2020
    • Step Lightly 2011-2019
    • Night Series 2010
    • Point + Form 2010
  • Resume
  • CV
  • Vital Thought