Mallory Pearson: Eat Crow

Mallory Pearson is an artist and designer based in Queens, NY. The 23 year-old artist from Manassas, VA focuses on creating work in the realm of painting, digital design, book arts, jewelry, and poetry. She received a BFA with a major in Painting and a minor in Book Arts from Pratt Institute. She portrays themes of folklore, femininity, and loss, and how these elements interact with the southern United States.

Circus

Artist Statement:
The South is defined by abandonment. As a woman from the South, the losses I ended up surrounded directly influence my work. For me, the mythology built through a family, the traditional ideals of southern women, an exploration of sexuality, and the remnants of a place so rooted in gnarled history are what drive my pieces to represent dark unsettled emotions and a sense of nostalgic longing. Using folk symbolism and repeated imagery, I create my paintings and book objects to explore the root of my own complicated connection to my homeland with its ravaged land. I focus on a theme of abandonment and emptiness, exemplified by crumbling structures and ghostly figures. In a land of piety, who wants ghosts?

If there are no ghosts, then what remains in the landscape when people are long gone? Repeated symbols like blood-red suns, mythical birds, and female figures touched by witchcraft, they become self portraits where I explore how my own emotions can be transcribed by my environment. I allow the landscapes to exist in a universal limbo where fantasy can be considered reality and a viewer can easily lose themselves among the trees. With limited palettes and unusual symbols, I emphasize the gradual slip of our memory over time in a foreign place.

In a sense, the land is never silent. Even empty houses creak in the wind. My works study the stories born out of foreign landscapes and the power of a woman embracing her wild nature despite the threat of danger. The mythology of the girl will always be alive and changing. What does it take to make sure it keeps breathing?