ARTIST'S STATEMENT - EYES

These works emerged from a larger body of work about identity and aging, each work taking on its own life as I compulsively made images of my own eye. These images were made journalistically. They are the result of months of shooting, and are shown just as they came off the camera. They have not been Photoshopped or manipulated except for brightness or contrast.

The original work, still in progress, from which the eye pieces evolved, addresses the obsession of society with youth and beauty, and the pressure to conform to an ideal that, for most women, especially those past a certain age, is impossible to attain. Identity and self-image can become eroded. In the eye images, which are an extension of my body work, the disembodied eye becomes a metaphor for both the seen and the unseen, the visible and the invisible.

What really interested me making these images was the fusing of two perspectives – one looking out, one looking back. The eye becomes not just the physical representation of an eye, but a cinematic screen on which quotidian sensory experiences are presented to the viewer as documentary reflections. While looking at my eye, which seems to be looking back, the observer sees what I actually saw at a certain moment in time.

Physiologically, the image is just iris and pupil; psychologically, the eye represents the watcher, the spectator might have the uncomfortable feeling of being watched; philosophically, the eye is the window (or screen) through which experiences and visual memories are recorded, interpreted and synthesized. We might all see the same thing, but how we perceive what we see is an individual reading. Typically, visitors to galleries go to view the work, not to be viewed. To confront an image of an eye is to be subjected to scrutiny, or at least to the illusion of it.

It's surprising how many viewers suggested that I should retouch the veins in my eyes – that the veins were something ugly to be hidden, erased or “fixed”. The electronic solution parallels the belief that cosmetic surgery can fix any external reality that makes us uncomfortable about ourselves. The intellectual thrust of this body of work is aging, memory and the pressure to try to reverse that natural process. The fact that people were offended by the veins, and wanted me to retouch them, seems to emphasize how ingrained that pressure is.

Carol Collicutt was born and grew up in Halifax graduating from Dalhousie University with a Bachelor of Arts degree in English Literature and later from St. Thomas University with a Bachelor of Education. She received her art training at the Nova Scotia College of Art and Design in Halifax where she focused on drawing and painting.

She has maintained a studio at Gallery Connexion in Fredericton for 20 years. Primarily a mixed media artist, she has recently turned to photography as a vehicle for her work on memory and identity, themes which have permeated her work for many years.

She has been the recipient of many grants from the Province of New Brunswick and the NB Arts Board, including 3 Creation B grants in 2003, 2005, and 2007 and her work is represented in the New Brunswick Art Bank as well as many corporate and private collections.

She was been President of Gallery Connexion since 2004 - 2007 and her involvement with the Board of Gallery Connexion extends back some 15 years. During her tenure as President, Gallery Connexion received the TD Canada Trust and NB Foundation for the Arts Excellence award for Arts Organization of the Year for 2006.

Carol has participated in many solo and group exhibitions at such venues as Gallery Connexion, the University Club Gallery at the University of New Brunswick, the City of Saint John Galleries in Saint John, the CBC Georges Goguen Gallery in Moncton, ArtsPlace in Annapolis Royal NS, and eyelevelgallery in Halifax.

Her work was also part of the group exhibition The Exquisite Corpse curated by Tom Smart at The Beaverbrook Art Gallery in 1993.

Her large photographs of eyes were shown at the Beaverbrook Gallery in the Marion McCain Atlantic Art Exhibition 2007, curated by Tom Lovett of Winnipeg .

She has participated in special projects such as the Artist-in-Residence program of the Fredericton Arts Alliance from 2002 to 2007, has taught many mixed media workshops, including at the NB College of Craft and Design during the summers as part of the City of Fredericton EdVentures program. She continues to work to promote artist-run culture and is serving on a committee to establish an association of artist-run centres in the Atlantic Provinces.

The artist gratefully acknowledges the support of ARTSNB