Stephanie Oconnor Turkish Bath

This series of work represents some visual investigations into a theory that cultural and perceptual developments in modern and specifically urban architecture is making it an increasingly marginalized and threatened art form. Conducive more for centralising and contemporary reason including the economic accommodation of the overabundance of city inhabitants, concepts of methodical architectural structures based upon more natural orders are becoming increasingly endangered. Here, has been utilized a Roman space, a Turkish bath house as context for these embellished canvases, folded and placed over the stretcher bars they were once covering. The quarter seen designs were found among a collection of Middle Eastern tile and plate motifs initially created between the 13th and 16th centuries, revived and colored with oil pastels.

Stephanie Oconnor Pakistan Tapestries

The image to the left represents the beginning stages of a large oil pastel drawing replication of a mirrored covered tapestry likely made in the Balochi province of Pakistan. Its rich and bold tribal colors are being correlated as accurately as possible to the canvas replication.

Below, this mural was created with images from prints, novels, childrens' books and comics appropriated to a template and then projected onto a three panelled canvas covered wall. Painted with black acrylic paint, the time frame for this project was five days. The painting includes a character strangled with rope and covered in grasshoppers, a couple seated on victorian chairs, a blind cat with a passing caravan of camels, a savage dog and a figure draped in robes.

Stephanie Oconnor Dtincluding Cultural Identity