About
Visual Metaphor
Marcia's artwork presents a personal investigation of issues and images concerning the nature of storytelling and its essential elements using visual metaphor. Her research germinates from a sequence of developments in mixed media in both digital and analogue format and including influences from various writers, philosophers, critics, and visual artists.
Process
Methodology
Marcia composes works which are labour intensive and process oriented; using a multitude of layers, media and visual components: painting, drawing, photgraphy, digital artwork which she refers to as Digital Paintings.
Each work exists as a space where a story can emerge for the viewer, a place where the viewer may interpret and/ or reinterpret the narrative they discover. The stories are flexible in content and although visual narratives are offered, the viewer may act as the storyteller through their own personal interpretation, as well as acting as the reader.
Development
The development of characters/ objects, and space, use of imagery, visual metaphor, and composition are pertinent for the exchange of each story. Her research into narrative revolved primarily around the use of metaphor. Umberto Eco speaks extensively on language and the importance of metaphor, particularly visual metaphor. Eco states that a written expression is enlivened by its translation into the use of visual metaphor (p.128, Semiotics and the Philosophy of Language, Indiana University Press, Bloomington, Indiana, 1984.). Language is not only captivating through the use of visual metaphor, but it is both the most important and the most luminous use of language (p.87, Eco, Semiotics and the Philosophy of Language).
Mixed Media
Painting, Drawing, Printmaking, Photography and Digital Media are for Marcia, a means to recording narratives, with all the components of storytelling: elements of time, evidence of events, presence of characters and objects, use of metaphor and composition. The representation / abstraction; use of visual metaphor within these images are utilized in a deliberate attempt to invite interpretation.
Content
Her work attempts to explore controversial issues that range from economics, religion, and alternative energy to ordinary everyday things like a group of people walking across the street or even witnessing her husband yelling at the TV. Most people have strong opinions on politics, money, and religion and people get passionate discussing these things.
"Where there is passion, there is friction and friction is energy. It is this energy that I try to capture in my work. I also find titles that provide a signpost to gently nudge the viewer in a certain direction. Once the person arrives to this place, I hope that they can bring their own meaning to the work and help be an active participant in the work." Marcia Tavernese