Kaylee Meyer

Living in Paradise

Watercolour painting collages.

“These hand-painted collages are an exploratory depiction of how I am visualizing and translating the interference of infrastructure and human activity that is imposed on nature. While living in Antigua, I have witnessed serene wetlands and beaches transform around me. I observed the increased development in coastal areas, progression of the tourism industry and the detrimental/destructive effects it has had on local ecosystems over time. I chose personally significant places to inspect more closely and serve as a focal point of reflection in the work. The collages are created using watercolour paintings I rendered from a personal archive of photographs, taken during my last visit in Dec. 2019. Different structural elements are cut out, with shape and line in mind to emphasize the artificial and harsh reality of these structures interfering with once pristine, undisturbed landscapes. The beaches are littered with human objects such as abandoned fishing boats and wooden umbrellas. Negative spaces within the building structure leave room for change, both the taking over of nature with these structures and nature reclaiming those spaces leaving only a skeleton of what once was there. Collage gives room for exploration, to create and show the relationships between elements. Small and simple gestures such as the position of an element can change the way the collage is read. The elements in these collages are placed where they aren’t usually found, intersect with each other and merge in different ways and create spacial confusion. This results in a tension between humans, the structures we have created and the environments we interrupt for our benefit.”