Artist Brianna Thaxton

Artist Statement:

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With purposeful synthetism my work invites retrospection within the viewer. Pyrography (free hand wood burning) offers a unique approach to mark making and along with pops of color, created with either a traditional paint brush or an airbrush, offers a balance between beauty and pain. A burn is a scar on wood. When the heat cools and the smoke clears the mark remains. In time the natural oils in the wood may lighten the mark but the burn will always be present. So too are the effects of the painful emotional and mental scars we accrue through life experiences. These scars are relative to the individual which, in effect, creates the world we live in, influencing our surroundings on that amorphous plane. The environments within my work, the backgrounds and foregrounds, as well as the subjects are always burned. I keep color locked in the sky to emphasize the presence of the Divine and/or I add color to highlight flowers in remembrance of familial bonds that remain present before, during and after painful experiences. After all, color is beauty and is always joyful.

 

The symbol of the unicorn is a personal representation of the living soul; my soul. Derived from a childhood obsession heavily influenced by pop culture films and fantasy novels that grew into an adult awareness after an in person glimpse of the unicorn tapestries (The Hunt for the Unicorn that hangs at the Met Cloisters in New York and The Lady and the Unicorn tapestries at the Musée de Cluny in Paris) combined with the need to not only understand the world but the need to escape it. There’s a scene from The Last Unicorn (novel) where the Lady Amalthea rushes to heal the severe burn wounds on the legs of Prince Lir’s horse after a battle with a dragon and she can’t do it. She sobs. Her powerful horn that gave her the ability to heal was gone. She was just a mortal woman now. As a child, I often dreamed of transformation; the chance to change myself into something greater like a unicorn, with power and beauty, but mostly to have the freedom to flee or the strength to protect and heal. 

 

I want to show that I am the unicorn. We all are. As a dominant species we are capable of wonderful things. We all enter this world with natural gifts of innocence and purity and the potential for strength. The human soul is divine and magical. However, turmoil outside our control challenges the longevity and endurance these traits have, often resulting in trauma. The pain of loss or the pains of love or the pain of doubt. I am willing to bet we all have a story or two we could share of pain we’ve experienced at one point or more in our lives. From childhood, to teen years, to our newly-adulting years and beyond. At home, at work, by a friend or family member or a complete stranger. It sucks. I hate it, but it’s truth. Pain and trauma are no respecter of persons and one person’s experience can never be weighed against another’s. There is also the reality that those who cause pain in others have most likely been hurt themselves and are some of the saddest people full of confusion. With this emotional narrative I am adding to the centuries old allegories of the unicorn representing a lover or Love itself, the life of Christ, purity, innocence, wisdom, and so on, as depicted by the unicorn tapestries in both New York and Paris, to show that through it all, there is hope.

 

Focusing on the allegory of Christ, for He is Love, and the motto: I’m trying to be like Jesus, my collective body of work will preserve His legacy and loving example to each of us along with His Atonement: that point in time when he felt all pain for all people and gave His life to remove that pain from each of us. I think to myself, if we are made in His image, and if over 500 years ago the unicorn was used to symbolize Him, then I too am a unicorn and so are you; striving for peace, beauty, love and healing.