entry and obstruction, access and denial
Using the arch and the shield as recurring motifs, my paintings investigate notions of entry and obstruction, access and denial. The arch spans spatial depth and denotes a passageway or entry/exit. It suggests an opening, an absence, a possible future; it is passive. The shield obstructs, conceals, protects, represents; it is frontal, present and active.
Both the central form/void and the peripheral form/void function as interdependent realms. They are either éndon (within: inside, interior, familiar) or éxo (outside: without, exterior, foreign). The reading of one as solid form or spatial void is mutually dependent on the reading of the other as its opposite. The large-scale canvases reinforce an association with architectural form, so that the painted arch creates the sensation of literal passageway.
The work is dependent on how the viewer locates and identifies these form/void relationships. Pivoting between arch/void or shield/form, the painting hovers in a state of suspension, withholding and unfolding, collapsing and expanding. No single reading is mutually exclusive of another.
Aschely Vaughan Cone (b. San Antonio, TX 1985) recently graduated from the LeRoy E. Hoffberger School of Painting at the Maryland Institute College of Art with an MFA in Painting. In 2007 she received a BA in Liberal Arts from St. John’s College in Annapolis, MD, studying classics and philosophy; in 2012 she received an MA in Art History from Tulane University in New Orleans, LA. She has also studied at the Skowhegan School for Painting and Sculpture, the Chautauqua School of Art and the New York Studio School. In 2016, her work was featured in New American Paintings MFA annual edition. Her awards include a matching scholarship for study at the Skowhegan School of Painting and Sculpture and the SMCM-MICA Artist House Teaching Fellowship. She was also the recipient of The Henry Walters Traveling Fellowship, which will allow her to travel to Indonesia during the Summer of 2017 to study Indonesian textiles and sacred architecture. Her current body of work investigates ideas of doubleness – entry and obstruction, patterns overlaid and intersecting, acts of veiling. Pivoting between arch/void or shield/form, the works unfold as their patterned surfaces veil, collapse and expand.