Aschely Vaughan Cone

Region: MFA Annual

City / State: Baltimore, MD

Using the arch and the shield as recurring motifs, my paintings investigate notions of entry and obstruction, access and denial. The arch spans spatial depth and denotes a passageway or entry/ exit. It suggests an opening, an absence, a possible future; it is passive. The shield obstructs, conceals, protects, represents; it is frontal, present, and active.

Both the central form/void and the peripheral form/void function as interdependent realms. They are either éndon (within: interior, inside, familiar) or éxo (outside: exterior, without, foreign). The reading of one as solid form or spatial void is related to reading the other as its opposite. Engaging the viewer’s body, the largescale canvases reinforce an association with architecture—and literal passageway or obstruction.

The work is dependent on how one locates and identifies the relationship between interior and exterior. Pivoting between arch/ void or shield/form, the painting hovers in a state of suspension, withholding and unfolding, collapsing and expanding; no single reading is exclusive of another.