Creation Spectacle, Disaster Spectacle 2010-Present

Peggy Cyphers’ paintings “Creation Spectacle, Disaster Spectacle” investigate the processes of entropy and evolution using a synthesis of painting languages, connecting Modernism, Chinese landscape, Native American traditions and fossil formations in nature. The spectacle of dueling forces – creation and destruction, growth and decay, informs the work. From the fossil cliffs and marshlands of the Chesapeake Bay, Maryland, to the cityscapes of China and New York City, these paintings respond across physical distance and time to the drama of creation.The abstracted painted imagery takes on a plant/animal symbiosis and relies on a combination of gesture and layering of paint, sand, gold and printed forms. Like a modern fossil, the textural qualities embed gesture, life force, as a language of color and visual stimuli The trace of the hand or mark making with brush leaves evidence of everything it is not, as a visible impression of the indeterminacy of space and thought. The invented surfaces of paint, glazes, textures and patterns establish a space that radiates light from within the painting. It is an explorative process, with time as the main ingredient, some paintings taking many years. The paintings fossilize the moment, meanwhile appropriating and reinventing images directly from nature. Cyphers’ paintings speak the languages within water, sky and the natural environment. These Modern Fossils unite the chaos and order of the natural world in a Darwinian evolutionary dance.