Kristina Arnold Artist Statement for Drawings

Drawings

My work investigates the often-competing ways in which professional biomedical science and an individual interacting with this system perceive, define and pursue physical and mental health. My current project looks specifically at the brain and the link it naturally provides between the physical and mental body processes. My drawings are visually and conceptually based on current research from the international medical community and information from the lay press. Ideas are manifested physically through making. The objects I create do not draw diagrams or illustrate specific points, but instead seek to synthesize and address abstract ideas.
I am interested in memory: the neuro-bio-chemical creation and hardwiring of memory, and the physical processes that occur allowing the degradation of memory and memory loss. I am also interested in the personal, individual experience of “memory.” Within my works, biological components are suggested, emerging from the drawing space: neurons, white matter, blood cells, the double helix. Included imagery references traditional ways of depicting and examining the brain: MRIs, dissection, biology textbooks. Map fragments suggest our quest to scientifically understand even the most elusive aspects of our human existence. A chaotic crazy quilt of colors, patterns and shapes gleefully resist categorization and control. Layers are created, stitched together, wiped away or obliterated, redrawn and cut away, recombined. Corollaries for the experience of the maturing brain, finished pieces become very physical records of their lived histories – works that are layered, process-rich explorations on the brain and the construction/ deconstruction of memory.