Simone Pommells

Winston-Salem State University

Department of Art + Visual Studies

Senior Exhibition

Puzzle Pieces

 

Artist Statement

 

As a visual artist, painter and actress, Simone Pommells creates work with a shared experience in mind, connecting the audience emotionally with the work. For this exhibition she painted four portraits using oil paint and one drawing in charcoal addressing identity, communication and expression. 

 

Kevin Banks Jr., Simone’s now nineteen-year-old brother, has inspired this exhibition entirely. He is autistic, extraordinarily creative and non-verbal. He creates portraits of people, cuts out the eyes and the nose, and puts the face over his. After viewing himself in the mirror, he proceeds to ball the image up and throw it into the trash. Pommells has studied her brother’s ritual for years, sometimes as he is looking upon himself, he makes a repetitive noise or a sound, other times he laughs and dances before deciding to get rid of it. 

 

Simone appropriates Kevin’s brightly colored and imaginatively proportioned portraits. She has combined her experience with painting three dimensional portraiture and the two dimensional work of her brother.

 

Pommells is intrigued and inspired by the idea of temporarily existing as someone else, as she does when she performs on stage and as others do when they place a mask over their face. Like Kevin, these masked individuals do not speak but they ask you to see them differently, if only temporarily.