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November - December 2008
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Keariene Muizz
 Keariene Muizz, Pétales D'Hier / Petals of Yesterday. Oil on canvas, 24 x 30 inches. Courtesy of the artist.
My soul is a canvas stretched across four wooden corners and tacked with copper nails that sink into the edges of timber like teeth. My art is nothing less than my salvation. It is the way I confront the weight of my losses. My easel is my altar, my creations, unanswered prayers that hang in evidence of the colors that have seeped through the cracks of my newly mended heart. I am not an artist. I am an interpreter for the unvoiced. I define “stone” as abstract flesh, and do not restrict the classification to minerals. Stones can be statues. Stones can be children. However, every stone reveals itself as a hardened structure, which houses a significance that is confined.
Each assembly of work I produce is inspired by the architecture and monuments of Paris. My passion obligates me to study these stones, identify their unvoiced desires, question the weight of their pasts, and acknowledge the pressure of being forced to hold a single stance throughout existence. I aim to clarify the personal history of each effigy, depict details of loose emotional connections, measure, affirm, and reconcile their positions. I translate the internal universe restricted inside statues to make the subjects understandable to viewers, who have only stood outside with judgment, but not from within with consideration; reconditioning a race of people, who stare at surfaces objectively as an audience, but never dare approach the more private inner atmosphere of stone.
Analysis is the bedrock of my creative process. In December 2000, I embarked on an educational pilgrimage at the National Library of France. Over the course of six months I systematically devoured over 150 essays, books, and letters which were collectively known as The Complete Psychological Works of Sigmund Freud. I convert multifaceted lectures with names like Psycho-Analysis: Exploring the Hidden Recesses of the Mind and Mourning and Melancholia to insightful visual statements.
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