New Art by Claire Pupo
Please join us on Saturday March 9th 6~10pm for an artist reception
Come in and see the art Mondays & Wednesday 11-4pm, throughout March & April
About the Artist
Claire Pupo is a visual artist from Spokane, WA currently living in Northern California. She received her BFA in painting from Marylhurst University outside of Portland, OR in 2013. Pupo has shown her work in Portland, OR, Louisville, KY, and Gold Country in Northern CA.
Pupo’s move to Gold Country in 2016 came at an intense time of struggle with a neurological disorder called misophonia and within the midst of a massive transition through heartbreak, personal growth, and spiritual development. Coupled with the overwhelming natural beauty of the area, Pupo found inspiration to create works that relay her experience with surprise, adaptation, intense meditation, and self-care. The playful element to some of the work derives from Pupo’s fascination with psychology, namely the Rorschach Test of the 1930s that was used to psychoanalyze a patient based on their interpretation of happenstance images made from ink blots. Many of Pupo’s works are created based on her interpretation of paint blots on paper that she cuts out and pastes onto her painting surfaces. The magic is using her connection to Source/Guidance/The One to create environments for these blots that eventually lead to their anthropomorphication and the construction of narratives between them.
Along with the paint blots, the serpent is a powerful symbol of divinity and personal spiritual development in Pupo’s work. In late summer and early fall of 2018, Pupo found herself in a sticky situation that provided an overwhelming amount of stress, shame, and intense self-transformation. It was at this time Pupo began to create images of a double headed serpent in many of her pieces. The double heads represent the overarching and oftentimes frustrating duality of nature: Macro and Micro. Life and Death. Dark and Light. Wants vs Needs. Growth vs Stagnation. However, the double headed serpents also represent an attempt to revitalize a connection to past selves and foster those relationships while trying to stay present and heal. Ultimately, the lesson and healing message from the double headed serpent is to realize that everything is perfect because it simply IS. Past and present and future exist simultaneously, and information can be gathered from each place at any time if the desire is present. Death is Life and Life is Death.
Many Blessings