Interview by Bill Friskics-Warren

Posted by Michelle Buckalew, Best Friends Multifaith Outreach Program

Artist Lori Fields...

Based in New Jersey, where she won a painting fellowship from the State Council on the Arts, Lori Field uses mixed media to create human/animal hybrids that straddle fantasy and reality in evocative ways.

Depicting a cast of mostly recurring characters, Field's quixotic paintings and drawings underscore the affinity that people have with other creatures, a kinship that our often utilitarian attitudes toward the rest of nature sadly mask.

Field's work, along with that of Nashvillian Anna Jaap, whose charcoal drawings of flora convey a beguilingly quiet spirituality, will be on exhibit at Estel Gallery in Nashville, TN through September 27, 2008.

Lori states, "My mixed-media drawings and paintings begin with preliminary collages used as sketches or references. The drawings, executed from these references, are stream-of-consciousness "outtakes" from worlds depicted within the original collages, and they straddle a border between reality and dream, past life and present."

She continues, "The beings that continue to emerge evoke subliminal, mysterious worlds — planets of my own creation, demimondes peopled with anthropomorphic angels, accompanied by mutants, exhibitionists, seducers, chimeras and other intimate strangers.

Drawing is a passion, and I intend for the work to be drawing-based, concentrating on the use of non-traditional media and arcane materials, always submitting to an obsession with obsessiveness. The mediums can vary: Some are colored pencil drawings on vintage slate chalkboards, others are meditatively drawn silverpoint renderings on gessoed paper.

Yet materially, the goal is often to combine obsessive drawing with encaustic painting. Many works are mixed-media paintings that incorporate my own colored pencil drawings on rice paper or hand-colored, one-of-a-kind prints with additional collage, thread, encaustic, beeswax, lace, charms, insect wings — whatever feels like inspiration.

I create human/animal hybrids who retain the physical characteristics of both. Having deciphered some of the imagery, the symbolism remains far more felt than understood, more disquieting than soothing. My hybrid creatures seem not entirely adapted to either their own environment or the human world. They are odd.

Making primitive visual myths of their secret lives, I habitually portray the features of animals who don't speak or cry out — rabbits, deer, giraffes, zebras and flying fish — as a way of emphasizing the hyperawareness that comes from listening intently, without speaking.

Animals lack self-consciousness or artifice, so the animal-like figures provide a means for emotive personification, characterizing or exhibiting human motives and foibles. The external traits of the animal/human figures suggest internal ones.

As my shape-shifting creatures morph, are they "becoming animal" or "becoming human"? Which transformation would leave them better off? These human/animal archetypes — a cast of reoccurring characters — create intuitive narratives that explore themes of loss, rebirth, identity, denial, alienation, loneliness . . . and human vulnerability.

The titles sometimes humorously call attention to and belie the seriousness of the content; the use of stereotyped or clichéd phrases opens a window onto my intentions."

Permission Granted by Bill Friskics-Warren of the Tennessean.
Copyright © 2008 The Tennessean.

What you can do:
1. Please visit http://www.tennessean.com/

2. Visit the AAR resources page to learn how to help animals.
Click Here