Record

• Main Author: Palma, Monica Rocio
• Format: Others
• Published: VCU Scholars Compass 2008
• Subjects: repetition; abstraction; paper; graphite; drawing; large format; Art and Design; Arts and Humanities
• Online Access: http://scholarscompass.vcu.edu/etd/1066; http://scholarscompass.vcu.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=2065&context=etd

Television static represents the absence of a legible image and the presence of something iconic and disturbing - a sinister abstraction. These repeating rhythms also occur in the Hail Mary prayer, in the houses in my neighborhood, in large crowds, and in my mother's crotchet patterns. The unsettling aspect of repetitive mark making in my drawings mirrors in part my psychotherapy, in which the past is revived over and over, as well as the idea of penance absorbed through my Catholic background.Since moving away from Mexico I have been using imagery related to the United States: rivers, mountains, and landscapes. But in the final drawings this subject matter remains distant to me; I connect to the work only through making marks on paper. On one level, specificity is important: which river? or which mountain?, but another kind of connection is made when the images cease to be legible. As information accumulates on the surface, I am interested in a purely visual and phenomenological effect that briefly defies the emotional nature of my source material.