Here it’s Peace / San Diego Art Institute, San Diego, CA.
June 5 – July 13, 2008

Here it’s Peace presents a series of recent paintings and digital prints: people (portraits and silhouettes) in quasi-abstract landscapes. Here is where I live, where, for me, it is peaceful. But I hear and read about people in the news. We are not necessarily different, but where they live, it may be war. My work reflects my vision of what is happening very close to me, interpolated with what is going on in the larger world.

I work all my images on my computer, starting with photos I take almost every day, of my family, my friends, of landscapes and plants from the desert. I work in layers, a technique I used a lot while working on series of monotypes. I play with the layers, their transparency, their colors, the way there are framed. The possibilities are endless. For some of the images I decide to stop and to print them, for some of the images I decide to paint them on canvas. There is a real pleasure playing with the computer and then continuing with them on another medium. I have a background in photography and graphic design and I am interested in mixing those techniques with painting. For me they are playfully inclusive.

When I was a teenager I lived in Africa for several years, and that experience changed me and my perspective on the world. It was at the same time a cultural shock and an amazing encounter with nature. I am very interested in desert landscapes which I am always eager to discover and very interested in placing my characters into these empty landscapes, metaphors for the human condition.

Michele Guieu, San Diego 2008