Rhea Cutillo

Region: Northeast

Website: http://rheacutillo.info

City / State: philadelphia, PA

I experience painting as an intellectual activity but with the immediate act as intrinsic and intuitive. I paint from a space of internal submission, though with a decisive vision leading the image. There is a conversation between using the medium to my will and letting the medium lead me.

My work focuses on a search for open space, both internally and externally. My paintings are meant to be expansions of space into the immaterial or cerebral realms. Absence and presence coexist within my images; both a dissolution and coherency of identity occur. I believe that the importance of finding empty space internally is just as crucial to the human spirit as conserving open land is to nature and her ecosystems.

My images, too, explore our novel position, coined as the Anthropocene. Where in the world does open space still exist without political or industrial control? In our contemporary man-made environmental crisis, it is not just the biosphere that is disappearing. Our history, heritage, and communion with the land is in question as well.