graceann  cummings

I tell people that I paint God’s mistake which I know is controversial whether you are deeply religious or the opposite such as atheist. Yet my work is not about God, religion, or atheism. 
My art evolved from a paranormal moment I had in 1995 when I was told: "God is Forgiven" I did not immediately understand that phrase and I spent several decades discerning its meaning which is about trauma associated with the inescapable relationship that our mortality has with innocence. Our birth is not the intent of death, but it necessarily creates our personal annihilation. This personal destiny leaves each of us vulnerable to condemning our connection with innocent others who “created us to die” without our permission. Having a fragile, individual body and personality also gives us invitation to disassociate from others.  In the darkest depths of awareness this personal destiny gives us the autonomy to recognize that we are entitled to not want to live because we did not ask for nor create our existence. Thus, our “error” is our ownership of blame for mortality which is not the power over death; it is our power over cruelty. 

MY ART

I use the ancient form of 2-D art to represent TIME as broken yet continuing; having a front side and a hidden backside. The front and back are separate-yet-connected parts of the canvas like the friction in musical compositions that enable individual pitches to carry the music forward; yet individually decay back into silence. Our mortal lifetimes are similar moments of friction that carry life forward.  My art examines this friction as the relationship between hope and trust relevant to innocence and mortality. The birth of each of us is a natural hope for existence that we trust is fragile because we know we are mortal. My art contemplates this existential paradox of hope & trust with my rotation of mediums, vivid colors, energetic brush strokes, narratives of time-conflict, emotional dichotomies, vortex compositions showing our inescapable connection to a fractured reality, rhetorical wordplay, and weapons symbolizing our relationship with vulnerability. My “signature” is broken mirrors that capture the WITNESS into my art as a medium as well as a comment that every individual is entitled to recognize life as them; and hopefully recognize that everyone else is also a witness.