Hoarders: Oil & Acrylic Paintings
Artist Statement
My current body of work is derived from my experience being employed by a hoarder for over a year to help develop a strategy to clean and organize his property. To him, the endless piles of physical objects either contained a memory or possessed the potential to manifest itself into something new. The objects were in a sense a lifelong collage.
The paintings, drawings and collages investigate the correlation between the process of creating art and the act of hoarding/cleaning up a hoarder’s mess. When dealing with such an overwhelming amount of excess, decisions regarding what stays and what goes must be made quickly. These are hard decisions for the owner of the objects, or the composer of the painting.
Working with this subject matter has revealed my own hoarding tendencies in regards to my studio practice. I have become influenced by the array of art garbage that accumulates through my process of working. The environment I am surrounded by while painting, and the accumulations within it have become integrated into my paintings.
Often, each painting is derived from and loosely based on specific bizarre events and futile tasks I have encountered while working with the hoarder. The narrative is used as springboard into each painting and often dissolves partially or entirely through the process of painting. I routinely use computer processes as a way to change and manipulate my paintings in an attempt to organize while the painting devolves. The translation of digital media and effects into the medium of paint provides a tactile and visceral quality that cannot be matched by the sterile relationship between the viewer of a computer screen or printed photograph.
Nicholas Scrimenti is a painter based in Dayton, Ohio. He received his MFA in painting from the University of Cincinnati in 2012 and his BFA in painting and printmaking from Miami University in 2009. He has worked with the organization ArtWorks in Cincinnati, Ohio on several of their community projects including four large-scale murals. The most recent mural works he has contributed to are on the Kroger corporate headquarters building in downtown Cincinnati, as well as a mural adjacent to Great American Ballpark, the home of the Reds. He currently teaches drawing, painting, and Color Theory at the University of Dayton in Dayton, Ohio.
