ARTIST-IN-RESIDENCE
★ ★ ★ ★
DONNA STEINER
Below the Surface
These little globes remind me of antique maps. I start by painting the surface; when it’s dry I add a layer of gesso or wall primer. When that layer dries I add another layer of paint, but before it’s dry I rub the surface—it takes a good amount of pressure, as will be evident from the torn rags—until some of what is underneath is exposed. The reduction process is very physical and feels much like scratching the skin until a wound opens. Any child who has ever picked a scab knows the catharsis; rubbing the paint off is much the same.
Perhaps making the globes look old evokes a sense of loss. We’re living in a time where, for many of us, things that once felt familiar, even reliable, now seem jeopardized. Perhaps we have always lived in a world that holds its secrets below the surface.
What interests me is creating and erasing simultaneously. It sounds very basic, but there is something about this negotiation that feels necessary and instructive. The effort of physically scraping a layer of “skin” off a painting leaves my fingertips sore, leaves the tools of this effort torn but elegant, and allows me to contemplate how to create in an era of perceived diminishment or destruction.
Making art is inherently hopeful to me—“practicing hope,” in effect, is built into my process. And I think I am drawn to things that feel incomplete, or even broken or damaged. My paintings feel like that to me—there are gaps, there are reductions, there are places that feel undone or exposed or hidden. Maybe those gaps, those real or metaphorical spaces, are places for someone else to enter the work. It’s like clearing a space on a park bench for someone else to sit. It’s like opening up an old map and saying come on, let’s figure out where we’re going.
Donna Steiner’s essays and poetry have been published in literary journals including Fourth Genre, The Bellingham Review, The Sun, Full Grown People and The Manifest Station. She teaches literary citizenship and creative writing at the State University of New York in Oswego. A chapbook of five essays, Elements, was released by Sweet Publications. Her paintings will soon appear in Lunch Ticket.
Inquiries about purchasing the paintings may be made directly to the artist. Please write to her at donna.steiner@oswego.edu.
