This group of Vanitas paintings explore the relationship between the material and the spiritual through the use of symbolic objects. Traditionally this genre was used in history for meditation on mortality, materiality, and meaning.
In these works, I have contrasted antique and contemporary objects for the same end: to provide opportunity for contemplation on cycles of life alongside questions of mortality, ethics, and balance between intellectual or material pursuits.
I see painting as a meditation: an exploration of relationships I encounter through observation and experience. I find greatest inspiration working from nature; considering innate dualities as they move through varied passages of color, meaning, and form. The resulting images reflect the search for meaning as a journey through the fluidity of perception, the passing of time, and the structure of change.
Saskia is a painter and curator from New Orleans. Her three-decade exhibition record includes international, national, and regional venues. Saskia's work and research focus on intersections of historical painting techniques with contemporary ideologies and explorations. She is also the founding curator of the Fine Arts Preservation Society of New Orleans and the newly formed non-profit Ozols Collection: A Museum of American Painting and Pedagogy whose mission promotes the advancement of Fine Arts as a vital learning tool promoting intercultural discourse with a foundation in classical techniques and conversations.
Saskia has taught at Boston University, Tulane University, and Loyola University, New Orleans. She has exhibited in cities including New Orleans, Boston, Philadelphia, New York, Moscow, and St. Petersburg, Russia. Her area of research is Realism in visual art with its contemporary intersections. She holds an MFA from the historic Museum School of the Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Arts, and trained with painters including Sidney Goodman, Bo Bartlett, Vincent Desiderio, Nelson Shanks, and Auseklis Ozols.