Sydney Drum

Sydney Drum is originally from Canada where she received her B.F.A. and M.F.A. degrees. For some years, her art practice has focused on two continuing bodies of work: large multi-panel paintings combining hand-painted and digitally-printed panels, and smaller abstract paintings in oil or acrylic on paper. She has exhibited widely in the U.S., Canada and in Europe. Her works are in the collections of the Museum of Modern Art, NY, the Philadelphia Museum of Art, among others.

Artist Statement:

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My large paintings explore the intersections of painting, digital media, photography, and other sources. These works combine alternating panels of representation and abstraction. Some panels are hand-painted (a labor-intensive, low-tech method); others use digital technology to explore how this technology has changed the way we view painting and the world around us (an emphatically high-tech process). This juxtaposition is intended to engage the viewer in a dialog about these different approaches in contemporary artwork. These ideas are shown in Untitled (SD//P122), a two-panel painting. The hand-painted left panel depicts a ripple pattern in a body of water. The digitally-created right panel initially looks like a photographic depiction of a similar ripple pattern but is a digital composite of multiple different water ripples. The final image combines these overlapping water ripples, resulting in deliberately contradicting patterns of light and shadow.

 

My smaller paintings on paper are abstract, exploring saturated colors which blend or contrast with each other. Each work is created using oil or acrylic on very heavy, prepared paper. These abstract works use thin white lines to grid vivid vertical bands of color. I use various tools to blend thick paint layers into the final, rather thin paint applications, some with very delicately blended areas.

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http://www.sydneydrum.com/