Scar Paintings
“Marie II”, Oil on Canvas 47” x 47”, 2009
Jennifer McRorie Biography
My work considers the self as a mediated subject, one that is impacted by experience and time, vulnerable to chance, both biologically pre-given and socially constructed; an entity whose subjectivity and borders are continually being redefined. Driving the creation of these works are questions I have asked myself, “Are we what we remember? Are we simply victims or products of our past? How much authorship do we have over the course of events in our lives?” The exhibition Transfigured is a means of entertaining these questions and initiating a dialogue about the self as an interface or mediation between contingency and agency, suggesting that through our each individual way of processing experience, our personal narratives and sense of identity are continually evolving and negotiated. Seeing the skin as the most eloquent signifier for individual bodies and identities, I have been exploring its symbolic, philosophical, psychological, and cultural aspects, through depicting the marking of the skin through scarring. The skin is more than just a body’s surface layer; it is a screen, a filter, and a medium of passage and exchange where life experience is reflected, absorbed and processed. As a sensory organ, the skin openly reveals and displays psychological states and emotions. It is that on top of which things occur, develop or are disclosed. My work focuses on these disclosures.
Marks on the body are a folding of time and memory into the skin, bookmarks of experience that allow the past and the present to converge. A scar is a form of text, time’s writing on flesh and evidence of life experience that is inscribed into the body. Through being marked, the skin records a personal chronology, an index of personal and socialized histories, with each unique, distinguishing mark contributing to a sense of identity. Our markings set us apart, illustrating our individuality, especially in the case using markings to identify an unknown individual. Scarring on the body represents the meeting of body and world, private and public, personal and social spheres. It reflects or externalizes personal experience to the outside world. Scarred skin becomes a model of the self based on trauma; it represents a wound suffered, endured and overcome. Though the trauma is survived, the mark of the wound may fade but is not forgotten – it is permanent. A scar is evidence that something real has taken place, either through an incidental event or with intention, and therefore, is an articulation of contingency and agency on the body. Signifiers of time, memory and marks of individual identity, scars also represent our physical vulnerability and mortality. While an ever-present reminder of our own fragility and impermanence, a scar also represents the resiliency and restorative healing that we and our bodies are capable of. Scars are stories of survival. Marked by experience and time, we, like our bodies, cope, adjust, transform and endure.
“Zhong”, oil on canvas, 47” x 47” 2009
The paintings in the Transfigured exhibition present individual scars of people I have known, representing a fragment of their personal histories. The compositions of the works present tightly-cropped details of the individuals’ skin, where the edges of the body are evident, but the actual location of the scar on the body remains ambiguous. The cropping of the imagery abstracts the subject matter, pushing it forward in the picture plane, making it confront the viewer, while its ambiguity decontextualizes the scar from the individual body it is found on. Although the scar alludes to narrative, acting as a signifier that something has indeed taken place, the specific context of the happening is unknown. These markings, though attached to real bodies, are universal. Indexes of time and narratives, these images serve as signifiers of the markings and stories we all collect, carry and display or disclose. Viewers are invited to draw their own associations and to relate the imagery to their own experiences of pain, trauma and aging.
“Murray”, Oil on Canvas, 47” x 47” 2009
While the scars due to incidental events – accidents, falls and collisions – and non-elective surgery represent the element of chance in human experiences and may suggest that we, humans, are the sport of chance, the inclusion of images of agency, in the form of self-cutting, is a means of introducing self-determinism or self-will into the dialogue. Like other contemporary examples of agency on the body (such as body-piercing, tattooing and modern primitive scarification), cutting is an individual’s attempt to erase and rewrite what is written on her skin and to take ownership over her own representation. The images also represent emotional and psychological suffering, adding to the dialogue that although these wounds aren’t always evident, the reality of experienced physical and emotional suffering, embodied in the scar image, gives shape to the character of each individual bearer.
“Cate I”, Oil on Canvas, 47” x 47” 2009
“…and wounds are created and shown, and the world is inscribed in the body displaying its own collapse.”
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