Andrea Moreau

Yemen (Coffee Plant): Green Abstract Colored Pencil Drawing, Framed

2012

My drawings function as personal interpretations of political or commercial propaganda. I begin with imagery found on postage stamps or printed advertisements and, using the visual logic and graphic language of the image, I attempt to tease out a larger framework from which to consider it. Finished pieces often incorporate printed matter and cultural detritus, which gives them an immediate and tactile connection to the world of objects. I am particularly interested in the postage stamp as a geographical artifact, and through my drawing process I attempt to learn something about a place by studying its official imagery and then creating a world beyond the borders of its fragmentary scenes. The finished drawings and paintings are a record of this study; they are a dialogue between the printed and the drawn, the official and the personal, the real and the imaginary. They are a metaphor for the way in which we conjure the places we hear about on the news and read about in books, using the tiniest pieces of information to construct a reality that most likely bears little resemblance to any actual place.