Artist Statement
Mystic artist Lynn Nesseth articulates life as craft. Trained and graduated in the modalities of esoteric healing, occultism, and herb-lore, Nesseth is often found performing as the starving artist in her local community (under her given name) and working as a clerk in a small natural food store. Meanwhile Nesseth intercedes the space-time continuum of the ‘given name-persona’ to create the persona of true identity: herself. Identity creating persona, Lynn Nesseth is to be realized the one most like herself. Being the artist emerging from the mystic allows Nesseth to traverse every realm of existence and to craft time and space as well as physical mediums. That is to say, in the process of creating works, Lynn Nesseth creates herself as well as art. At once Pygmalion and his sculpture; as if Pygmalion had sculpted his true-self.
My work is in devotion to the cultivation of new relationships with common perceptions of time, space, self, and systems of humanity. The act of perceiving something changes its material properties: the scientific community accepts this. If the power of intentional observation and interaction with materials can transmute matter, then we can transmute ourselves (our matter) through this practice. My work seeks to cultivate such a practice for myself and those that interface with my work. I mostly employ the power of liminal states to evoke moments of pause, breaking up concrete understanding. I create my own systems within existing systems by shifting physical and conceptual space in 2-d, 3-d, and 4-d work through unconventional use of materials and the juxtaposition of seemingly unconnected or unrelated ideas. I affect change through the power of intentional thought, clairvoyant vision, and formal action. I reference ancient esoteric symbols of knowledge: favoring the language of mandalas and sacred geometry to create spatial relationships in all dimensions.
As my giants, Gianni Motti and Sophie Calle inspired the faith in me for indomitable security in my own ideas and the faith in me for absolute surrender that underlies their works: Motti’s ‘Eclipse de lune’ where he invites guests to a rooftop exhibition of his eclipse of the moon and Calle’s ‘Où et Quand? Berck’ and ‘Où et Quand? Lourdes’ in which Sophie has employed the use of a psychic to make her decisions for her. In both cases, work touches life and work takes responsibility for life. Marina Ambramovic’s ‘Rest Energy’ clearly depicts that suspension, or liminality: that moment of grace, or faith, surrender or fight; and she draws it out to be considered. Not only does it represent threat/opportunity, a suspension of choice, but the person to who’s heart the arrow of the taught bow is being held is experiencing real danger and we know it as observers- and it compels us in our risks.
My artworks function as interfaces between adjacent worlds: the fantastical, archetypal, and mythic share ‘fields’ with the mundane, scientific, and concrete; or it’s the child’s world that butts up into the adult’s. The suggestion of a working, possibly harmonious relationship between irreconcilable materials or concepts invites deliberate re-examination of fundamental ideas. Invoking incalculable, immeasurable or unproven (for their worth or source) materials, phenomenon or concepts impresses upon my mind the purpose of finding meaning and moreover creating meaning: choosing or moreover inventing truths that few believe and holding them as truths; then creating from the new meaning. Because the suggestion is there in my works: ‘the 13th space out of time’ and public performances of the majick carpet created from that space, ‘hero’s quest (Switzerland)’, ‘living proof (a collection) evidence the universe was preparing for my existence’, ‘fairie artifacts’, and ‘light beings’; the audience must choose how much they want to believe, or suspend disbelief. To find one’s own true meaning in the experience or through the evidence of the experience is creating art and creating a true life.
I received my BFA in Painting/Drawing from California College of the Arts in San Francisco and moved to Asheville 5 years ago to study esoteric healing and the occult. I am now certified in the field of herbal medicine, including human anatomy and physiology and botany with a focus on the medicinal flora of the Southern Appalachians (focused on ethical wild-crafting); and in the Ancient Art of Energy Healing, with Reiki I, and am an Ordained Minister.
