Anna Naig

Artist Statement

“They [mythic images] are speaking about the deep mystery of yourself and everything else. It is a mysterium, a mystery, tremendum et fascinans-tremendous, horrific, because it smashes all of your fixed notions of things, and at the same time utterly fascinating, because it’s of your own nature and being.”  

- Joseph Campbell, The Power of Myth 

 

I wish to communicate with viewers through the language of mythology, a crucial aspect of our ancestor’s lives. As I personally search to reconnect with nature, images of mythic figures and archetypes materialize in my dreams. My work focuses on these figures, which tend to have strong relationships to the earth, plants, and animals. Our connections to each other, the earth, and animals are deep rooted in all of us.  My intention is to interrogate these connections and push them conceptually through the use of abstracted archetypal and mythical figures rendered in a fashion reminiscent of cave drawings. Lithography, the process of printing from drawings on limestone, was primarily used to create and repeat these figures referencing the recurrence of archetypes throughout history and various cultures. I hope that by using the language of mythology viewers can sense some of this connection that all humankind shares.

 

Dreaming in Myth 

Lithograph, watercolor, and drawing 

12’ x 6’ x 6’ 

2022