ARTIST’S STATEMENT – NATASHA MAYERS
Signs of the times is a daily visual journal of intruding news images and events and feelings, my attempt to make sense (and nonsense) of the times in which we live. Individual painted signs and symbols are configured into larger asymmetric “signs” with compound meanings.
In this body of work, I am using the abstract language of road signs combined with painted news images and images closer to home, to make a playful and deadly serious statement that reflects recent world events.
It may be simultaneously seen as a cry of joy and a cry of rage, a damning critique of our government’s policies, but also an artist’s coping mechanism for living with the onslaught of news about oil wars, global warming, torture, car bombs, hurricanes, floods, etc. There are cautionary signs about eggs thrown at the local 4th of July parade, potatoes held hostage, shoes that don’t fit, beds and birds on fire, a moose in a crosswalk, and scary parking meters. These invented and found images are drawn from Maine to Guantanamo, New Orleans to Iraq, France to Afghanistan.
