Artists Registry
Santa Fe NM United States
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Artist's Statement
Statement of Work
Abstract Narrative as defined by the artist GOTT
"Juxtaposing abstract images and forms against an implied representational concept that invokes a parallel narrative is the definition of abstract narrative painting.
In order to capture intrinsic narratives without the use of representational images, a continuum that flows between the real and the abstract is needed. If effective, iterations of the narrative naturally emerge from within. Abstract narrative paintings are never completely clear nor obscure and any measurable prominence assigned to either the narrative or the image emerges from both the artist’s technique and the viewer’s perspective.
What influences the abstract narrative painting evolves from many sources, such as: invention, imagination, metamorphosis, separating and recombining forms, intertwining abstract images with concrete narratives, deconstruction and recreation, all designed to melt exactness into abstraction with a purposeful narrative.
The abstract narrative painting, with its ambiguous image, creates a natural tension between the familiar and unfamiliar. Narrative clues are hiding in plain sight, inviting an interpretation and conversation." . . . GOTT
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GOTT is my birth name and art signature.
I’m told it translates as GOD from German.
Vicki is my more familiar name.
September 11, 2001,
A friend called. “Turn on the news!” It was around 6 AM, Pacific Standard Time, on September 11, 2001, and just moments after a hijacked passenger jet, American Airlines Flight 11, out of Boston, Massachusetts, crashed into the north tower of the World Trade Center.
Like most, I looked on stunned and horrified. I felt helpless.
Over the years since, visions of a 9/11 painting would come to mind. Capturing such devastation as an aesthetic, composing a painting of all that unfolded that day, was a monumental challenge.
Such a painting demanded nothing idyllic, nothing that would in any way obstruct the heartbreak, but instead project a genuine, palpable and honest perspective of the vulnerability, the devastation of that single moment in time that scarred so many souls.
Fully aware of the challenges, the scrutiny, the sensitive nature of the subject matter, I went forward.
There is a precedent for such a painting. In 1937, German warplanes dropped 100,000 pounds of bombs on the civilians of the Spanish town Guernica, killing between 1,000 and 1,500 people. Picasso immortalized this atrocity in his painting “Guernica.”
When asked, “What is an artist?,” Picasso stated, “He is at the same time a political being constantly alert to the horrifying, passionate or pleasing events in the world, shaping himself completely in their image.”