Arielle Renee

Sometime is it anarchy to follow one’s own heart. There is so much chaos, beauty and destruction caused when you choose yourself over the conventions of society.

In “Never a Wedding, Sari” I recognize my own moment of letting go, letting go of all the futures I was told to want, all the compartments that I was told I fit into. In that moment I was able to tear this fabric apart in order to turn it into something new. 

This series started several years ago, when news that an adolescent Fin Whale beached itself on the local Oregon coast. I had never been so close to phenomena of that magnitude, either physically close or emotionally close by my complete fascination and duress.  I am captivated by the idea of something so huge, grand and beautiful rising from the unseen depths of the ocean to become a burden. We all struggle with death, in this case the whale served as a direct unavoidable confrontation with death and a physical multi-ton obstacle to be dealt with. As I paint these magnificent mammals, I dive deeper into the other implications of this phenomena. The environmental issues, the politics and the reminder at we humans are so small with such a limited understanding of all that is going on beneath the surface.