Irene Delka McCray Statement

Body and Cloth has been my subject for many years. Either cloth is in concert with the body or cloth takes on its own dance of transformation. With the bodies I mean to capture something of the significance and strength of character that has been gained by lasting through uncertainties and vulnerabilities within the forces of life and death. The bodies and cloth are meant to perform similar conditions metaphorically as they knot and loosen in emotional tying up and releasing. I see the folds as sensuous, turning in on themselves, taking unique, never to happen again forms, mimicking how each person’s composite traits and qualities are distinctly their own.

Most recently I’m painting the cloth with only the impression of the body, where it once was and is no more. I’m thinking about the duality of life, having both boundaries and lasting enormity.

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