Meg Boe Birns - "Just Like You"

Meg Boe Birns

I work with paint, canvas papier mache, wood and other media to create pieces that do not subsume the materials within the content, but instead make the materials I am using part of the subject matter. My interest in constructing my work with these materials has to do with such metaphysical issues as the meaning of things, the nature of the material world, the relationship between spirit and matter. I think all my work has a strong spiritual or mythological content, but at the same time I do not see art as a transcendence of matter or the material world so much as an embracing of the mystery of matter, the mystery of things. As Martin Heidegger said, the fundamental question is: Why are there things? "Why is there something and not nothing? My own work reflects this struggle between intuitions of meaning and the materials the world gives us, but it is not the product of a conscious or intellectual plan on my part. No one said this better than the art critic Tony Cavanaugh in a recent issue of ArtSpeak, who wrote that I create "lively freewheeling abstractions with an intuitive feeling, as though the imagery springs directly from the artist's unconscious in the manner of automatic writing." Another way of saying this is that I feel my work comes from a part of my psyche that is hidden from me. Ironically my generally bright and colorful constructions seem to come from "the dark side of the moon." the side of my self that is turned away from the light of day.