HOVERING
My work continues to explore shapes and forms that evoke an archaic visual vocabulary. We are in a time of exceptional collective global upheaval, the news of which I attempt to tame as it reverberates through my own nervous system. I found the work in this show soothing to make and now find it soothing to look at. A balm of sorts: reminding me of the timeless aspects of life. The quiet, the natural, the neutral. Within these abstract landscapes I find comfort, and my hope is that others might find their own version of this reassurance when they encounter them.
As these fourteen pieces came together in my studio, they started forming an unplanned and tight-knit group. Where I had seen only swaths of color, lines, shapes, and textures while creating them, a visual narrative now emerged.
Created using earth pigments, they share a language of visual shapes – repeated in different ways, at different scales, in different materials. While the paintings in the group are two-dimensional, pictorially many of them step into a three-dimensional space as a horizon line emerges. With this compositional delineation, a space above and a space below reveals itself. My eye sees some elements hovering above the abstracted landscape, leaving those below embedded in the ground. The Stone Cloth pieces gently float between a two- and three-dimensional realm. By painting, pasting, layering, stitching, and then wrinkling and rubbing the resulting paper compositions, they become sculptural. When hanging, these Stone Cloths appear to hover just in front of the wall, free to move if a slight breeze is created by nature or humans passing by.
ABOUT MARILET
Marilet Pretorius is an artist who works with earth pigments and natural dyes in the disciplines of painting and fiber arts. Her work trajectory follows her impulse to create, an ongoing attempt to explore and translate her impressions of the universal and archaic aspects of nature and the human experience in a meditative way.
Originally from South Africa, her studies include Industrial Design at Universidad Iberoamericana in Mexico City, Interior Architecture at Boston Architectural College, Graphic Design at Art Institute of Boston, and Product Design at the Fashion Institute of Design and Merchandising. She currently lives and creates in Carmel, California. Her work is in various private and corporate collections. She works with architects and interior designers on commissioned projects. She is represented by Hugomento gallery in San Francisco, CA and Pulp gallery in Holyoke, MA.