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By combing images made by past artists, drawings made of spaces and objects she encounters, diagrams and photographs from newspapers and magazines, Alice Leora Briggs attempts to depict what the world looks like to her. With reverence and honesty, she seeks to portray the world with its imperfections. The artist is acutely aware of her temporary presence in the world; morbidity and mortality are the major themes in her work. Briggs sees herself continuing the lineage of artists, who for many centuries in Europe, created images of the darker side of the human experience including martyrdom, suffering, disease, death and disaster. The use of allegory, historical references and Shakespearean tragedy visually connect her to this tradition.
The artist does not distinguish between the disastrous effects of politics and nature. In Brigg’s opinion nature and culture are not so easily divided, and she does not seek to put forth a political agenda, she only expresses what she sees.
To represent this world, Briggs uses a technique of painting and drawing developed in the 18th century called sgraffito. Today the term refers to a method of scratching lines upon a plaster surface - the incisions in an upper coat reveal a lower stratum of contrasting color. Briggs combines her sgraffito drawing of India ink over kaolin clay incised with x-acto knife, with acrylic. This technique allows her to express her “manic duty” to make marks on the surface. Each image is an accumulation of thousands of marks which chart the way her eyes move over objects and through space. These marks together reveal what the world looks like to her.
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