United States

Cheyann Washington

Los Angeles

Wonzimer

Drawing

(untitled) 

The silk veils that float like diaphanous visions- either upon the wall
or as installations- are expressions from the imagination of Cheyann Washington. These images are a reflection of her thoughts and feelings that change like a shape shifting cloud- from one moment to the next. In her paintings she tries to capture these fleeting moments by working swiftly with inks and natural dyes on thin pieces of silk. The fluidity of her process and the beauty of these synthesized images of human and plant-like forms, give the paintings a lightness and joyful countenance.
She has recently been using natural dyes in which the colors will change over time, adding a poetic metaphor about the continual transforma- tion of one’s self and the world around us. We are enmeshed in systems beyond our control and our identity changes as these forces transform our world.
For this exhibition, Cheyann is creating an installation of images that
are made with dyes that she is making- using beets, turmeric, amaranth, spirulina and other pigments obtained from plants. The ephemeral nature of these dyes- that they will change and transform through time, is a metaphor of the nature of life itself.
The shape of life is chimerical. We are living beings whose presence
on this earth has been short in terms of geological time. We have found ways to use plants as food and medicine, to alter our minds and to create homes for protection. Cheyann’s images of figures morphing and melding into plants, is playful and profound. We have changed the nature of plants by altering them to create better and more nutritious food, more beautiful flowers and trees, and in a symbiotic relationship, they have changed
us into a different form of social animal from our ancestors who lived as hunters and gatherers.
We live in relationship to the natural world for better and for worse, as the recent forest fires and the Coronavirus show us. But through these interactions and symbiotic relationships, the shape of life continually transforms our world and our cultural consciousness.


Cheyann Washington Available Artworks

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