Craft Plaques Statement

I was referring to the painted shaped plaques when I wrote this. I'm still not sure yet, how the 3-d materials-based plaques relate.

"I try to create visual images that are different from anything I already know or imagine. I use painting as a process by which to find this new imagery, and set up various frameworks for guidance. The frameworks themselves are always evolving, and they reveal broader areas of interest. My intended focus may be about materials and formal paint handling, or personal experiences, both cognizant and sub-conscious. Very often I create work around an iconic figure or structure of unknown purpose or meaning.

I began using shaped wooden plaques because they offer an interesting compositional challenge, and because they hint of an incongruous craft genre. They serve to foil any conventional aesthetic intentions I may have. I'm deliberately staging an awkward proposal, so that I am forced to find new solutions and new imagery.
 
These shaped also panels set up a paradox, for they are neither 3-d sculpture nor a picture plane rectangle. These shapes taunt the illusionist world that I treasure, forcing me to make conscious choices about their existence in reality. I must choose to place a representational image on/in these 2-d planes that are also objects. Such images no longer materialize with ease. The outcomes are inevitably negotiated compromises, where painted illusion and personal subject matter and 3-d objects struggle to co-exist in the same perceived reality."
 
-Carla Knopp 3-18-12