Overheim Art

This painting is part of the Fragments series. The world is changing rapidly. What do we bring with us from generations of the past? Two gloves reach out in hopes of coming in contact with each other, a somber reminder that physical contact is a thing lost over the past year. This hope for a connection is also reminiscent of the famed painting by artistic master, Michelangelo. The gloves emulate the widely known image of Adam and God on the Sistine Chapel.

This painting is part of the Fragments series. Fabricated shows a simple image of a mask laying across a yellow stripe on asphalt. A long shadow stretches from it, the tip of the nose making a dark peak. A mask like this has been unimportant to people outside the medical field until recently. It is now a symbol of the pandemic and the difficulties people have endured during it. In the United States, the mask became a political conversation. There are so many more important issues beyond the choice to wear a mask that have arisen this year, including climate change, civil unrest for the mistreatment of people of color, and even the spread of COVID-19 itself. One of the biggest issues has been convincing people to wear a mask. It is surprising how hard it can be to convince people that they should care about each other. When the world crumbles and there are only small remnants of the past, the symbol of a mask will remind us that we only care about ourselves.

This painting is part of the Fragments series. Going out to eat at a restaurant seems like a thing recently lost to many of us, yet it still exists. Fortified depicts a fenced in lot scrambled by the abstraction of layers of torn paper. Behind this fence lies a multitude of tables and chairs meant to serve as a location for safe outdoor dining. There are, of course, alternatives to eating among other people in a location such as this, yet we as a society have decided to raise these walls to protect the unnecessary activity of eating around strangers. What is important to us? Why do we prioritize comfort over survival? If our civilization were to crumble and leave behind these sites of fortified space, what would it say about our culture to future civilizations?

This painting is part of the Fragments series. With the end of people, who is there to take out the trash? Forlorn examines the institutes of society we take for granted, like the system of waste management that we use. These crates that carry our used products also carry disease. If the garbage man is sick, who takes out the garbage? If we are sick, are we exposing the people that manage the trash of the city? Once people are gone, there will no longer be a need for these trash cans. They will become relics of a time once cherished. As our world crumbles into nothing, the simple desires of fast food and the twenty-something-year-old lifestyle will be distant and petty. It is time to reexamine what is meaningful to us as a society.

This painting is part of the Fragments series. The scene is abstracted by tears through layered paper. Each layer of paper depicts the same scene in a different color palette, and each layer of paper is unique. Fuel is a piece looking into the casual act of filling a tank of gas. In this new and strange world we live in, the actions we often see as commonplace become dangerous and unsettling. Hands are no longer mechanisms to achieve basic tasks, but also carriers of disease. We are haunted by the touch of our own hands just as much as the touch of a stranger. The outside world no longer has moments of peace. It is a deadly frontier and every moment could lead to our demise. This simple act, along with many others, has been perverted. It seems impossible not to be in constant fear of interactions with the outside world.

This painting is part of the larger series Disease.

This painting is part of the larger series Disease.

This painting is part of a larger series Disease.

The world has a certain duality to it in everything around us. Everything has good and bad, but the blend of the two can create distinguished imagery that tells a story. In the paintings of the series Contrast, I examine the double sided aspects of social anxiety.

Do people want to be seen, or would they prefer to remain in the shadows? There are challenges to everyday life and the first one is often deciding whether to put on the day’s clothes or to stay in bed. Though this series explores the world in a black and white manner, it does so with the understanding that the existence of two opposing sided often creates vast gray areas. We live in these gray areas, never truly venturing into the black or the white. We view things as a duality, as a positive or a negative, yet things are never as simple as that.

Though the fog of indecision is heavy, time is unending and relentless. We continue moving forward despite being stuck in the fog. Maybe eventually we will become more accustomed to it.