Charlotte Ström

I create in a variety of mediums and styles. I paint primarily with oils and acrylics on canvas, though often, I am drawn to more fluid mediums - inks, watercolors, and casein paints. I also love to work with the grittiness of dry pastels or charcoal. I enjoy rendering the human form. I tend to personify most of the images I paint anyway. My landscapes recline in the sun. My flowers stretch into the air. My fields of harvest produce, prosper, and thrive. Motion has been an underlying key to unlocking a number of artistic doors for me. Observation of action and reaction, exploration of cause and effect, both on and off the canvas, cause me to revere and to respect the ever-changing aspects of livelihood. These images occur as I propel myself forward. --- Charlotte Chipman Ström, Artist______________________________________________________ ____________________________________________________________ ____________________________________________________________ ____________Artist Statement: --- I am a painter. I am painting. My breath is inconsistent. I am holding in air for intense lengths of time. Then I’m gasping, gulping - just trying to catch up to my hand with body in tow, moving furiously across the surface of an embryonic canvas. I am not beautiful anymore when I paint. The beauty gets sucked up in the process. Muscular contortions skew my face and bend my body in and out of autistic rhythms. I wear out a path across the floor that spans from far away to microscopically close to my task. My eyes cross, putting that blurry state of objective distance I need between my work and myself. I need to see differently. I need to see what it is I can’t see. I need a different perspective to make this illusion believable. In my left hand is a dirty shard from a mirror that broke a long time ago serving that same third-party purpose. Sometimes I can be found turned upside down or sideways trying for the detached effect. So much involvement and interaction leaves my person covered head to footprint in smudges and daubs of paint. A trail of evidence discloses my daily routine - paint streaked across couches, doorknobs, coffee mugs, my man, the dog’s furry tail and on every article of clothing I own. My fingernails will never come completely clean - that’s pigment and turps. And in the winter months, when the cracks in my fingertips run deeper, more brittle and painful, I imagine that the stains run right into my veins. These hands don’t cooperate after I’ve been clutching at brushes and rags for undetected hours. Sometimes to open them is to cringe. If the painting has brought me to the ground, my knees are unforgiving. I need time and patience to stand and even more to step forward. The muscles in my neck will never unfurl and my shoulder blades throb from conducting an orchestra of color and texture. My hair is doing something indecisive and dark circles underline the exhaustion in my eyes. My teeth might be gnashing at my pincushion lips, or my mouth moves soundlessly in dialogue with this deaf/mute structure. Random bleats and murmurs meant for no one might slip off my tongue. One of these nuggets of nonsense might sometimes just be enough to jostle me back into an awareness of my surroundings. And I’ll wipe away the fog from my eyes, but am really only wiping paint into them. Pausing here, I find myself in front of this entity, observing it and myself and our relationship the way one gazes into a mirror with a lover. I can see where I am and were I’m going and where I’ve been, and I’m wondering if anyone witnessed this chicken dance. This is my life right here. This is what I’ve been doing with my time. It is my greatest compulsion to dance this dance. I am compelled by desire and passion to create, and it is habitual for me. I labor over this love because it feels good to me and my body craves this movement, this application, this function for being. I paint because I woke up today and because I’m still breathing and because I have to. ---------------------- Charlotte Chipman Ström, Artist _______________________________________ _______________________________________