Zayn Compton

I am interested in creating visual models based on abstraction that help me understand the world and my personal experience. Working from multiple reference images, art history, and abstract language, I create compositions that often include doubled shapes and nearly recognizable symbols to retain the imperfection of memory and understanding. Fields of color are disrupted by digital imagery and thick layers of paint. Each of these elements gains new meaning and interpretation in relation to each other. Here, lack of clarity is an acknowledgment of fallibility and the dynamic nature of understanding.

My most recent work is grounded in nature. Plants appear as outlines, impressions, and weeds from my garden that have been stuck into paint. I consider the relationship between paint, subject matter, and object. Vegetative forms are presented inside painterly materialism, and materiality becomes a concession of painting’s limits. Smooth or painterly surfaces give way to planes of paint that are impressed upon by plants or filled with bits of partially dried paint. My painted environments become models to consider our relationship with, and existence in, small and large ecosystems as the world is mourned and celebrated in a visual fugue.