Artist’s Statement

I was sitting in a museum, staring at a painting of the Mother Mary.

My mother, a now-retired art teacher, walked up behind me.

"You know, Trisha," she began, "it's a funny thing about art."

I said nothing, but listened.

"No matter what time period, no matter where on earth- how remote or centralized a civilization was- they always found a way to create art."

I stared at the Mother Mary as I listened to my own.

"Don't you think that just demonstrates the innate human need for art?"

My eyes move with the brushstrokes in the Madonna’s robe.

"No one needed to tell any population in human history to create art. They all just spontaneously began to create it. No matter what form the creation took, whether painting, drawing, pottery, jewelry-making or paper-folding, art occurred in every civilization in every corner of the world, as if reflecting a universal human need for art."

I sat there silently. For once.

As an atheist sitting in that museum, in that moment I immediately realized that the same could be said for religion and belief in a Higher Order. 

No matter where on earth, or in what form, some method of worship to a Higher Being or Order spontaneously occurred in every civilization known to humankind.

There are inarguable human needs in this life- food, water, air, love, art and faith are all among them.

My work explores the interplay between them all.

TRISHA