ARTIST STATEMENT
My artistic lens has been cyclical. I am constantly returning to flashbulb moments in my childhood and back to my reinterpretation from the present. The loss of parental guidance during my formative years has been a catalyst, forcing me to focus on fragility, time, significant people, and items. I am aware that my perception of my parents was distorted early on, and now I use my work to reframe and reshape them. Through this, I am able to understand the origin of my relationships and better process them.
Exploration is central to how I work with oil paint. I build and scrape back texture to depict my estranged fragments of memory. I investigate my attachment to former possessions containing emotional weight, and through symbolism, I play with the dichotomy between what is tangible and surreal. I do this to spend time in my memories, unpacking and revisiting time that has passed, and recollecting what has become foggy. Painting allows me to create a version of that past that is both real and surreal. The physical process does for me what digital processes cannot.
I work on large, irregularly shaped canvases, expanding beyond the limits of a traditional rectangle. Treating the surface as both image and object, translates my dimensional, lived experiences into a flat space. By depicting my loss, I use these hardships to further my practice from what had once revolved around grief, and move towards investigating potential connections.
BIO
Born in the early 2000’s, Theresa (Tree) Schiavone grew up during a critical age of technological integration that had become a constant throughout her early education. Having lived through the rise of The Post-Digital Era as Gen Z, a new social monster named Covid intervened and shattered this once explosive amount of connection through multimedia platforms. This complete shut off of human interaction occurs and alters her relationships forever.
Originally forced out of her and her father’s Denver home by eminent domain in 2011, Schiavone’s house flipping father was compensated only enough to relocate to rural Bayard, Nebraska. Before her senior year of high school and after her first serious mural project, she lost her father. As the most influential teacher and only close-contact family member, this left the artist officially considered a Ward to the state. This newfound comprehension of mortality was the catalyst for an investigation and Tree’s return to her childhood roots.
Presently, Tree is at the end of her BFA with an emphasis in Painting, at Rocky Mountain College of Art and Design. With the primary medium of oil paint, and through financial consciousness of supplies, Schaivone has become the fabricator of her own stretcher frames. She has shown examples of this fabrication at multiple galleries in the greater Denver area. In canvas building, she explores the masculine wood working techniques of her father and the inherently feminine stretching of textile, introduced by her mother; further surrounding her paternal base.