Judith Barbour Osbourne

As an artist working with texts, I am interested in both verbal and non-verbal ways of knowing. By continually returning to the space where the verbal and non-verbal intersect, I maintain a listening state of mind, alert and receptive. It is from this state that I gather inspiration from kinetic, sensory, emotional, psychological, intellectual and ultimately spiritual information. I make these aspects of non-visual reality visible, as if staining the wind. I therefore consider the time I spend in my studio to be a personal form of research into consciousness.

“Chance” is important in my work because it allows elements and relationships that I might never have created if I were to work completely within what I know, within the boundaries of my skills and my comfort zone. Chance is only a surface appearance of the universe that appears when we relinquish control. The butterfly principle points to a connection among all things, an order beyond our imagination or understanding. By acknowledging this higher order as I work, I am, in a way, inviting the universe to collaborate with me. Because I, too, am an integral part of this universe, it is actually the universe collaborating with itself, through my eyes, hands and mind.

My part in the process is to recognize heretofore unfamiliar order in the work. I often refer to the universal principle of the dynamic relationship of opposites (e.g. chance and intention, organic and geometric) to guide me through the unfamiliar territories in which I place myself. The resulting elements and relationships generate energies that become the subject of the work.