Clara Lieu

Artist: Clara Lieu
Title: Unknown 1
Medium: lithographic Crayon on Dura-Lar
Size: 48"X30"
Date: 2009
About the Artist: "I am a professor, writer, and visual artist. I write an advice column for visual artists called "Ask the Art Professor" which is featured in the Huffington Post. I currently teach in the Illlustration department at the Rhode Island School of Design. In the past I have taught in RISD Foundation Studies, the RISD Printmaking department, the School of the Museum of Fine Arts, at Wellesley College, and at the Lesley University College of Art and Design. For four years I was the Director of the Jewett Gallery. My studio practice explores isolation and mental illness through drawing, printmaking, and sculpture. I have exhibited my work at the International Print Center New York,Bromfield Gallery, the Danforth Museum of Art, the Currier Museum of Art, the RISD Museum of Art, and the Davis Museum and Cultural Center."
Statement: I've always been interested in relationships between groups and individuals, why we group the way we do. For example, any time I'm at a social gathering where people are collecting, I find myself analyzing the actions between people, looking at how people are moving from group to group, who's where, who's over there. It's a feeling I've had since I was really young, I remember being six years old and noticing stuff like this. Those three people are clustering; that person is alone. I really don't much like grouping with people. I'm on my own a lot of the time. So when I'm in a crowd, I look to see who else is standing alone.
About the Work/Connections: "This project presents the most severe form of isolation as loneliness that is experienced when physically surrounded by other people. This is a specific form of loneliness that is involuntary and imposed upon by others, creating a state of discontent characterized by bitterness and a sense of punishment. The presence of others is what can heighten and intensify the experience of loneliness for an individual. These works depict figure groups wading in an infinite and undefined body of water. I visually portray loneliness as the experience of feeling unseen and unknown within a group." -Lieu 

Lieu likes to focus on peoples deepest emotions and the interactions, or lack thereof, we have with others around us. I think knowing this adds to the feeling in her work and makes it even more relatable. I like that her pieces are so creepy and mysterious, because that's exactly how the feelings she is portraying are; mysterious. The figures are like a darkness we all have lurking inside of us, brought to life for all to see.