Artist's Statement | Hummigh Brid Studios

Gina Malfetano: Artist's Statement

This January solo exhibition is the first time my work has been public since my graduating class’ final senior exhibition in 1998. As a first-generation artist, I was on my own. During my experience as a student, I remember there was pressure around needing to make your work have consistent continuity and needing to develop a personal style. Add the extra pressure to confidently apply the proper and convincing artspeak while declaring said style and process. Needless to say, I struggled up until my senior year of college trying to find inspiration and connection to a specific subject matter and content without feeling like a pretentious fraud. At times, I had to fake it to make it. Suffice it to say, there was cognitive dissonance. I vacillated between portraying real and abstract imagery. Realism was a bit too rigid. Too abstract did not satisfy my need to express something literal. I also remember wanting to paint birds then, Birds of Prey, not wimpy little songbirds. But then I got restless and bored and felt like something vital was missing that I couldn't place.

It wasn’t until I was in the college library one day that I found a visual encyclopedia. I desperately needed an idea for my senior seminar, so I started looking for images that jumped out at me. I started playing and began juxtaposing and overlapping 2-D contours and silhouettes of dynamic images and shapes. I would arrange them into various compositions that looked aesthetically appealing, excited about layering, experimenting with transparency, the effects of color combinations on depth, and receding and advancing shapes. I felt like I was onto something but still only had part of the equation figured out. It wasn’t the imagery or the process of making the art that was missing.

That was over 25 years ago. Since then, I have collected, used, and reused many images over the years. Although I was unconsciously tethered to specific images, it wasn’t until this latest series of paintings that I perhaps dislodged a previous unconscious narrative that spoke to me. I never had a connection to any narrative or deep meaningful purpose for using any specific image in a painting other than just liking how it looked. My experience of painting was always a dissociative, escapist activity. I would get lost in the process and tune out never knowing why. I didn’t realize I was guarding and protecting myself from my lived experience. The art inside of me has been a constant, loyal, and yet silent companion, waiting patiently for me to take an earnest look into the mirror it was holding. It has taught and is still teaching me to trust myself.

So, with the unconditional, loving support and encouragement of my inner circle of humans, some deeper introspection, and some much-needed emotional and spiritual healing over the last few years, I have come to get past the hurdles of many conditioned beliefs, including my guilt-driven belief that making art was somehow just a superfluous, frivolous indulgence. I now realize how much painting has been grounding me while reconnecting to the truth surrounding painful events of my life experience that I had compartmentalized and become emotionally closed off to. Being surrounded by unconditional love and art has provided a safe, integrative, and therapeutic opportunity and lens to see the error in that conditioned thinking and behavior and how it was a prison. It allowed me to participate in being a witness to my reality. In the safety of that sphere, I had a choice, the agency, to connect to the truth or continue to hide from it. I have been slowly but steadily willing to be present with and pay attention to the unfolding of what has been yearning to be expressed. Ultimately, it permitted me to be imperfect and still believe I am worthy of love.

Reflecting on my struggle many years ago in college, and the nature and scope of some of my most difficult life experiences, I am consciously learning to be accountable to a much more pressing need than just slapping a label on the kind of artist that I am or needing to hone and specifically define what I want to express outwardly to other people. I have learned to reclaim and consistently be accountable to my agency and integrity intrinsically for myself. Through showing up for myself to paint, I have found meaning and purpose in my collection of previously arbitrary, random images(except for perhaps the kangaroo, I still don’t know why he shows up) and have reconciled that my own story hasn’t always mattered to me because it was subverted both consciously and unconsciously due to the oppressive contrivances of those who sought to diminish my spirit and sense of self.

Making art has been and still is either a buffering means to escape from overwhelm (a potential form of self-suppression), not necessarily a bad thing in moderation, or it is a way to embrace the chaos of reality, be still, present, and allow for self-expansion. At times, feeling powerless and without agency, I tend to emotionally disconnect in the process of making art as a coping mechanism referring to the former. My integration of emotion, accountability, integrity, and truth, serve the latter. I’m learning to create space and expand my capacity for more connection to being present with my whole self and in turn, to others. Art has helped me navigate that and learn about myself when I am willing to focus, discern, trust, and listen. I’ve also learned that I’m quite fond of wimpy little songbirds. Especially, Hummigh Brids.