NYAB Event - Valerie Hird "The Fifth Day"

Valerie Hird "The Fifth Day"

Nohra Haime Gallery

This event has ended.

Hird explores her personal take on the creation myth focusing on the cosmic moment before the birth of man. In a bow to Genesis, she has paused the six-day origin myth to reflect on what the natural systems in all their promise of new wonder would look like. After years of working on projects in the political cauldron of the Middle East-- in the midst of cultural clashes, religious conflict, and endless rhetoric-- she felt overwhelmed and haunted. Lacking any belief system that made sense, she returned to the United States to create her own 'myth' and has dedicated the last two years to the re-enchantment of her own inner world.

Hird has taken the vast panoply of cultural imagery found in many different (and often competing) creation myths and has integrated them; interweaving their iconic patterns into an inseparable whole. She began with four elements-- earth, sky, water and wind -- with each making reference to the other. Painting in a seductively ritualized manner, Hird created her personal mythology; a complex world based on integrated systems. The collective result of which is an intricate landscape of symbols and experiences that is both appealing and seductive. It leaves behind verbiage and travels toward an intoxicating world of unspoken but deeply-felt mythology.

[Image: Valerie Hird "The Fifth Day" (2010-11) oil on gessoed BFK paper]