Shirley Kaneda

"When I was really young, I always found abstract painting compelling, because, for lack of any other word, it was a sublime experience. The experience was beyond language. So you had to think and try to decipher what this was. You couldn’t just rely on one sense to understand something or the world. As you see and reflect on these relationships of sensations and qualities, it leads to greater autonomy of the individual rather than forcing some false universal. If we accept language’s deficiency, it forces us to understand things differently and I think that’s something useful. That’s the reason I’m not interested in making literal images of women’s oppression, for example, but I think I can explore these issues differently and as effectively. I’m not interested in the Symbolist tradition, I guess. As an artist, I feel what is imaginable has to be stressed." (daqui)