Five Horses

Nicole Charbonnet painstakingly creates multi-layered mixed media works that physically reflect the deterioration of the old stucco walls in New Orleans, her hometown. Like the city, her paintings are built up over time. As the layers are peeled back, the previous lives of the structures shine through. Exploring the ways we remember, both individually and collectively, and the ways we forget, she starts each work by painting a memory, an image that has long existed elsewhere in culture—in other artwork, in film, and in nature. She then sands the paint down, forcing the memory to fade, and begins hiding it under other images or words using plaster, modeling paste, and "anything else that's lying around”, to create a modern palimpsest with a sculptural quality.

Original mixed media work distressed on layered plaster dipped canvas.