Michelle Forsyth
For the past decade, Michelle Forsyth’s work has been inspired by historical events, specifically the balance between public and private memories of collective tragedies and traumas. For “Letters to Kevin,” the artist has brought painting to bear on source material much closer to home while still in pursuit of the documentary mark. In these works, Forsyth presents representations and interpretations of plaids inspired by the clothing of her husband. These watercolors are part of a continuing body of work entitled “Small Plaids” - five-by-five-inch square watercolor paintings, each representing a distinct plaid pattern in a specific palette. The images, concrete and stable from a distance, up close retain innumerable traces of the artist’s hand. Forsyth’s source plaids are mass-produced and market-tested, yet she recreates their designs and colors with personal diligence and care. In the end however, the new materials assert their qualities and we are confronted with passages of pooling paint, variable transparency, and modulating line quality.
Nine years ago, Forsyth was diagnosed with Young Onset Parkinson's Disease. The diagnosis pushed her to reconsider her work as a whole, and she shifted her practice to focus on what was going on in her immediate domestic surroundings. Various forms of …
For the past decade, Michelle Forsyth’s work has been inspired by historical events, specifically the balance between public and private memories of collective tragedies and traumas. For “Letters to Kevin,” the artist has brought painting to bear on source material much closer to home while still in pursuit of the documentary mark. In these works, Forsyth presents representations and interpretations of plaids inspired by the clothing of her husband. These watercolors are part of a continuing body of work entitled “Small Plaids” - five-by-five-inch square watercolor paintings, each representing a distinct plaid pattern in a specific palette. The images, concrete and stable from a distance, up close retain innumerable traces of the artist’s hand. Forsyth’s source plaids are mass-produced and market-tested, yet she recreates their designs and colors with personal diligence and care. In the end however, the new materials assert their qualities and we are confronted with passages of pooling paint, variable transparency, and modulating line quality.
Nine years ago, Forsyth was diagnosed with Young Onset Parkinson's Disease. The diagnosis pushed her to reconsider her work as a whole, and she shifted her practice to focus on what was going on in her immediate domestic surroundings. Various forms of reproduction, replication, and repetition of personal objects, and the body’s interaction with those copies, serve as the genesis for the artworks—both formally and conceptually. The act of making within her domestic habitat marks her shifting physical and emotional relationship to her surroundings.
Forsyth is a proponent of repetition, both aesthetically and conceptually. Tales of companionship and narratives describing human vulnerability often accompany her works. Whether embedded within the structure of the work itself, or included as a footnote to a piece, she employ writing to express a gratitude for those with whom she have shared a life. Forsyth mentally stitches together these stories, keeping her hands busy to forget physical pain while she thinks, mourns, and commemorates her past.
Courtesy of Auxiliary Projects
