As an artist, what is your relationship to your audience?

My greatest hope is that my audience “gets” my work and my greatest fear is that no one will show up. Does that sound neurotic? Maybe…it is just an ideal. Although while creating in my studio or in the forest, I never think about my audience or their response. This relationship between myself and the viewer is formed in public space.

In my paintings and installation, I dance between exploring altered states of consciousness, and or ritual inspired by my travels to sacred places, or by my dreams(subconscious.) I feel that my creativity is the evocation of the sublime within myself. This all comes from my personal experience, but through my process my work seems to transcend boundaries into the universal.

When viewing my work I attempt to activate my audiences imagination and intuition. My hope is while looking at my work, they can journey somewhere and find meaning within that experience. When ever I get feedback from my work I am overwhelmed and moved that my work is communicating my intention. As well as I feel a deep sense of connection with my audience that dissolves the “other.”

This is a reflection from one of my collectors, who is now living with my work that is entitled “Knowth”

I really love it. Thank you for creating it. It brings me so many emotions when I look at it. My mind wonders to places that I am afraid to go but at the same time brings me hope and certainty that I will find clarity and light. It is like facing the darkness of the spirit but at the same time, in the background, there’s light, there’s hope. It is a dark painting, I wouldn’t label it beautiful, it is more than that, more like a portal. The textures, the colors and layers are incredible to me.

Danielle Molonski

My site specific Earth Art takes on a slightly different relationship with the viewer. Primarily in this work I am honoring Nature. This work is also temporal. A key aspect to this series is the witnessing and of the interaction of the work by another to activate its potential for the witness to remember something they have forgotten. My intention is for my shrines to evoke introspection and a sense of the sacred for those who stumble upon them in a forest or in a city. Although, I do not know if anyone ever experiences this work. Synchronistical at a party I was talking to my friend’s husband about what I was up to in terms of my art and I said I was creating tree shrines around the Bay Area. Shocked, he said “Did you create one in Mill Valley?” I did and he found it… ah the Universe.

I stumbled upon a sacred moment. My nephew and I went walking on a wooded trail near our home. He is twelve years old and loves the woods. We are glad to be close. But even in the woods we were distracted. Thinking of other things, not particularly present with each other or where we were. We stumbled upon the shrine at Cascade Falls, and it awoke something inside us. What is this? We wondered. Look at these colors…around this beautiful tree, and resonant energy … this is where people have gathered to honor this place. And so we finally entered into a place where we were, and arrived, home at the falls.

Bennett Johnston

My relationship with my audience is about reception and validation. I feel it is a healthy one, it helps me grow as a being in time, as well as in the eternal. For both of us, the viewer and the artist I feel it is the beginning of a dialogue between object, person, nature, and psychic space. I believe that the web of connection is being formed between cultural expression and transformation.

Namaste, Lisa

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