BARBED PILLOWS AND SILK SNAKES
Barbed Pillows and Silk snakes is Harwood's thesis defense work from her senior year at Pacific Northwest College of Art.
I am empowering myself by portraying my body through painting in exposed positions, such as confronting uncomfortable histories, challenging developed rituals, and reflecting on emotional shames and adolescent dilemmas. Sexuality, memory and nostalgia are themes that guide my current lines of inquiry. I am to create new archetypes, interior spaces and relationship dynamics, while confronting uncomfortable histories.
Barbed Pillows and Silk Snakes intends to create a pictorial space that highlights how emotion, body and mindset can change over the course of childhood and into adulthood. Highly detailed objects and figures, repeated patterns, and soft textures and fabrics pull the viewer in a nostalgic and comforting way. In my painted interior worlds I depict characters that may remind viewers of cartoons they enjoyed growing up, people or family members they know, or it could bring up their own obsessions as a child. Even if some viewers can’t relate to all of the experiences in my paintings such as pop culture and nightmares, I am hoping some of their childhood memories will resurface through my chosen color palettes, textures and patterns.
