After a successful year with the publication of her latest book, Descants & Cadences, mixed media artist Stephanie Law continues to raise the bar on enigmatic storytelling. Like a modern day Dreamweaver, she gently unpicks the strands of reality and remakes them around us, nature centre-stage, inviting the viewer to step into a universe full of beautiful paradoxes.
Ever-enchanting, Stephanie Law’s new series of paintings come to Krab Jab Studio in Seattle this June in her brand new solo show, ‘Metamorph’.
‘Metamorph’: The Art of Stephanie Law
Threads series – Following the Light
Exhibition Dates:
June 10 – August 6, 2017
Krab Jab Studio
5628 Airport Way S | Ste 150 | Seattle | WA 98108
For additional information and purchasing details, please contact the gallery directly: [email protected]
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“Golden seams shine through the cracks of the worlds I have painted. Golden threads are webbed and tangled in the gaps. It’s the stuff of raw potential that is the result when something is unraveled down to its bare essence, like a painting dissolved into paper and pigments, or a bee deconstructed down to its component shapes and forms and essence. Metamorphosis becomes an act of creation.”
In ‘Metamorph’, Stephanie Law eagerly plays with a world of impossibilities. Her show connects multiple series of works including “Unraveling”, “Essence”, “Continuum”, “Threads”, and “Papilio Phantasma”, creating a master event full of delicate vim. The final works are exquisite. Stephanie eagerly speaks about her process while creating this series: “When creating, I become locked in the visual instance that is before me. I often wonder what is beyond the boundaries that my painting frames. I wonder where this solitary glimpse fits into a broader context, and what would happen if I were to take it to an extreme, one frame after another, each changed but connected and part of singular existence.”
Unraveling X
Unraveling – full collection
This concept of a singular existence connecting each painting is clear, portrayed in her show at Krab Jab Studio with a visual elegance which further heightens the sense that there is more going on than we can see. Each frame becomes window to another world into which we can only glimpse. As a collective display for Krab Jab Studio, Stephanie Law has given birth to something truly, perhaps almost painfully, raw and beautiful.
‘Metamorph’ unveils the pith of imagination where pearls and leaves exist as building blocks of Life, transforming into butterflies which reach beyond their frame. In “Unraveling”, Stephanie explores the Ouroboros-like duality entangling the two twin-like words ‘ravel’ and ‘unravel’, existing as both synonyms and antonyms of each other. “Essence” portrays some of Stephanie’s childhood memories, transformed, while “Continuum” shares fluctuations and changes that occur throughout life.
Papilio Phantasma close up
Papilio Phantasma
“I am not one who works well within a box. I have learned over time that to coax the paintings from my brushes that I want to create, I must allow the paintings to create their own boundaries instead. I am drawn along in their wake, and I begin to see that there is no beginning, and there is no ending. Each frame is not an isolated instance. The world that starts on the canvas of one piece has a perpetual existence, and I am the one who is the visitor, setting fleeting paintbrush-foot into that realm, then stepping onward.”
“Threads”, though complex, focuses on the metaphorical essence and realisations of a single thread’s ability to create such intricate patterns. Stephanie’s exploration of this concept leads to multiple pieces of artwork, labyrinthine and alluring. To finish off her selection for this solo show, Stephanie Law’s mini series “Papilio Phantasma” has been inspired by the dreams of being a butterfly, unknowing which, in reality, is truth:
“Once upon a time, I, Chuang Chou, dreamt I was a butterfly, fluttering hither and thither, a veritable butterfly, enjoying itself to the full of its bent, and not knowing it was Chuang Chou. Suddenly I awoke, and came to myself, the veritable Chuang Chou. Now I do not know whether it was then I dreamt I was a butterfly, or whether I am now a butterfly dreaming I am a man. Between me and the butterfly there must be a difference. This is an instance of transformation.” (As translated by James Legge, and quoted in The Three Religions of China: Lectures Delivered at Oxford (1913) by William Edward Soothill.)
“Metamorph” The Art of Stephanie Law opens this Saturday, June 10th. Printed editions of the show catalogue will be available for purchase through Krab Jab Studio’s website and at the gallery. For further details, contact Julie Baroh, owner and founder of Krab Jab on [email protected] or phone 206)-707-9311.
Unraveling IX
Essence series – Bee close up
Essence series – Bee
Essence series – Dragonfly
Threads series – Transference of the Muse
Unraveling I
Unraveling II
Unraveling XI
Unraveling VII
