Jessica Palomo

Papaver

2021

My work is a response to the grief of losing a loved one, a trauma that can overload and fracture the conscious mind, causing a shattered emotional state. Through abstraction and mark-making, I explore the dynamics of this ruptured reality that place identity and emotion in a liminal, ambiguous space. By rendering only a handful of distinct organic forms, the eyes rest merely for a moment before plunging into a sea of textural marks. These expressive involuntary marks do what language cannot, intuitively creating a passageway to concealed memories, recording a trace of their complexities through drawing, and ultimately logging the intricate and multifaceted sensations of suffering in hopes of creating a truer empathetic connection. These drawings speak from the body, connecting, sustaining, and transmitting traumatic impressions with each varied gestural mark. The overall encounter is ambiguous in form and liminal in space, fluxing in perspective, and never providing a sense of clarity.