Artist Statement
Although I work in a wide range of media—drawing, painting, collage and printmaking on mylar and on paper—drawing is the heart of my practice. Through drawing I explore the intersection and interdependence of three core themes.
The first is that my body is my primary mode of experiencing the world. That is, I perceive the world through my bodily experience—through sensation, sight, hearing, touch, taste, and feeling.
The second is that my mind attempts to impose structure, using linguistic and mental concepts, to give the world a permanence and reality that does not exist.
The third is how openings, or passageways, reflect the fluid and changing nature of experience and, in particular, the movement through the unconscious and dream world.
So, I represent the body—primarily my body—not as a fixed or contained entity but as something constantly changing and fusing, interconnected with its environment, an environment that is also constantly changing.
Sri Nisargadatta, a great spiritual teacher, wrote, “Love says, ‘I am everything.’ Wisdom says, ‘I am nothing.’ Between the two, my life flows.”
My art represents my experience, the way dreams, images, subconscious, memories and thoughts arise and fall; the way there is nothing concrete or contained in this corporeal experience.
—JESSICA LEVMAN
