Anna Gregor

Artist Statement

The concept of intersection and the potential distance, violence and harmony it can create between the poles of body, mind, self and other are at the heart of my work. My practice explores the problem of moving through our contemporary and polarized world by creating quietly complex paintings that don’t stand still, in which space shifts, categories blur, and bodies meld and splinter. By playing with the intersection and assimilation of different perspectives, I strive to dissolve the boundaries within and between the bodies my paintings depict––and between my body as I paint and the viewer’s body as they look. My paintings ask the viewer to relinquish their own point of view, to imagine themselves to see from another’s perspective and to think in another’s mind, thereby destabilizing the concept of “self” and “other.” To achieve this goal of two minds intersecting, I’ve been conducting scientific research on optics, psychological research on the phenomenon of sight and art historical research on the use of reverse and radiant perspective in Medieval and Byzantine art. My goal is to develop alternatives to mathematical perspective, which favors the single perspective of the painter/viewer, to make paintings in which points of view intersect and entangle with one another, momentarily collapsing the distance between artist and viewer, listener and speaker, body and mind, body and other body.