Aria Brownell is an artist living and working in Austin, Texas
She has a BFA in Painting from SUNY Purchase College
Contact me:
When a photo is taken it holds an importance unbeknownst to me. Only when I paint that photo can I learn its importance. And by working through it, through every inch, every glare, every nook and dark spot and every hair, I am gradually learning the image and amplifying its importance. Moving through memory and transcending into meaning. Memories aren’t all important. Memories aren’t all real, or all there, usually foggy, half-memories or told memories.
An image can be captured but not always created. Every time an image is taken from its original space in time and duplicated it changes its meaning. The dialogue differs slightly if not drastically. Micro-movements and time of day are noted when in the moment they may not have been so.
In waking time we are unaware that as we move throughout space we are living within a memory. This memory can never fully be known again. We create myth, legend, gossip, anecdote, embellishment, half-truths, lies by omission. Cameras do something absolutely amazing which is to freeze a movement and declare it as memory. Paintings venture beyond this and take this memory and declare it meaningful. It has been given flesh onto canvas and new color and light. It now becomes more than myth or legend or anecdote but a new type of story as in it is now a record in paint.