ArtistCianne Fragione

for no flower dies at the end of its season quite like the sunflower does

Date2013-2014

MediumLithographic crayon, Conté crayon, graphite pastel, collage, and oil on paper

Dimensions40 1/2 × 30 1/2 in. (102.9 × 77.5 cm) Framed Size: 45 × 37 in. (114.3 × 94 cm)

Credit LineDC Commission on the Arts and Humanities Art Bank Collection

Object numberDCCAH2015.016

ClassificationsPaintings

Locations

Health Benefit Exchange (1225 I Street NW, 400)

Description“Some visual ideas continue to capture my imagination, and by now I can see the regular emergence of certain favorite forms throughout my career. I tend to draw them exhaustively, though they typically go on to appear in other mediums as well. The sunflower is one, a strangely iconic form, almost figural, embedded in my cultural background, a crucial motif, lovely as a form, and I have turned to it over and over again: its appearance is obliquely stately, even commemorative, in “no flower dies at the end of its season quite like the sunflower does.” When I work on paper, I prefer a scale that permits the use of large brushes, strong color, and an array of mark-making tools — thus I am able to use oil wash, pastel, raw pigment, oil sticks, pencils, dip pens, charcoal, gouache, liquid ink, big bamboo pens, and collage. Paper also feels more direct to me than canvas, more immediate, even though it can accommodate marks and gestures that I associate with paintings on canvas. At the same time, it has its own quality of presentation, its own atmosphere as a medium. It is often said that works on paper are closer to the artist’s hand than painting on canvas. I am not sure that this is necessarily the case, or that it is always true, but a selection of works on paper can certainly expose or reveal aspects of an artist’s essential character and imagination — her hand and her incorporation of a wide variety of material resources — in a manner different than canvas, collage, or assemblage. It is by comparison flexible, prodigiously inclusive, available to the combinative building of images. In this sense, the work on paper does ask for something all its own from the artist. I believe it can act similarly for viewers and in doing so provide an exciting visual environment that frankly shares the rich and complex processes of art-making.”