Day 3: Carolyn Lavender

Portrait is a grid-based drawing comprised of two hundred 4” portraits of animals. The 85” wide drawing is done on a single piece of stretched canvas. It is my intention that the animals get the same respect as people. That is why, in Portrait, I rendered them accurately so that they are portraits of each individual animal. Each animal is making eye contact with the viewer the way people do in yearbook photos. When you stand in front of the piece there are 200 pairs of eyes.

The Woods is a scene representing the suicide of someone I met once. I chose to populate my imagined scene with 50 animals to illustrate the imprinting that her death created in the location of the act. 

Preservation Woods is populated with taxidermy animals that are inserted into the scene. Both the backdrop and the animals are from original photography. There is a personal connection to each image and memory of photo locations.  The woods were photographed in Stehekin, Washington while the white deer came from a frame shop in Tempe, AZ. The zebra was found in a bar in Florence, AZ and the Jacob ram was in a hair salon in downtown Phoenix.

Rhino- Rhino, and Bear- Bear 2 are intimately scaled realistic drawings play with real and fake, along with revealing a sentimental possession of objects which function as surrogates. The real animal is directly observed and photographed, usually in a zoo, while the animal object is from my personal collection.

Portrait

Portrait

The Woods

The Woods

Preservation Woods

Preservation Woods

Rhino- Rhino

Bear- Bear 2