MMoA Elected Artist Linda DiFrenna works in mixed media and photography, focusing on the balance between image and material, as well as process and concept, to create works that are unexpected, mysterious, spiritual—sometimes disturbing—but always thought-provoking. DiFrenna’s artwork will be on display in MMoA’s Schuster Gallery from August 23 – October 5, 2019.
Opening Reception: Thursday, August 29, 5:30pm – 7pm

The Manipulated Photograph

My intention as an artist is to create inspirational artworks in which the process is as equally important as the concept. I want to create images that are curious, mysterious, and unexpected, to bring the viewer a sense of discovery that is exciting and exhilarating.
I focus on the relationship between image and material. Many pieces incorporate paint, ink, marker and/or spray paint. There is always a balancing act between the image and the abstract use of paint. It is a challenge not to lose the image and the meaning of the piece behind the paint or ink but to enhance it. Some photographs are veiled behind a metal mesh curtain or various pieces of material.  The veiled effect engages the viewer to stop and look more closely at the work.
Construction, assemblage, collage or any combination of mixed-media is part of my vocabulary as an artist and therefore it spills into my photography. Feathers, bones, stones, wire, wood, metal, paper, the tattered, the rusty, the bent, the faded, and broken fragments of objects that once were become precious bits and pieces.  They are gathered, set aside, and stored in my studio and subconscious for days or even years, waiting for the moment in which they will be chosen to be reinvented, renewed, and recreated in new juxtapositions.  Because of the selection of materials involved and the association that they provoke, this process of selection and invention through reconstruction sets up curious paradoxes and yields unexpected results.  The ordinary and the commonplace are endowed with wonder.  Common and familiar identities are erased.  The logical and restrained become evocative, disturbing, mysterious, magical and maybe, oddly beautiful.
Manipulating photography in alternative and imaginative ways produce sensations and emotions I remember experiencing as a child making art.  To play freely with paper, paint, scissor and glue without thought of right or wrong.  I grant myself the freedom to move between the traditional image, processes and materials without apology.
—Linda DiFrenna, 2019
First-prize winner of the 62nd Regional Exhibition

Images used:
Linda DiFrenna, Stormy Days Ahead. Black and white photography.
Linda DiFrenna, Skull & Mesh. Black and white photography.