The images shown here are from two different series:  Panama and Tropical Storm.This body of work is a follow-up to my Rubber Flower series, my homage to Japanese etchings and Chinese ink wash.Deeply influenced by my love of Asian art, Panama and Tropical Storm represent my celebration of calligraphy.  The strokes I capture with my camera may not represent any word but it captures the soul and energy of movement (chi).  The movement of a simple stroke becomes more important than representation of the subject itself.  For me, calligraphy distinguishes itself from other cultural arts because it emphasizes motion and is charged with dynamic life! These images were captured from a trip to Panama City in 2011.  During my walks around various neighborhoods, I couldn’t help but to image these strokes were trying to tell me something? The stories they witnessed?  The motion and dynamic life are definitely apparent.

I use translucent resin as a primary medium in my work to ‘sample’ moments in time and create visceral and oftentimes anthropological investigations of human experience including emotion, thought and memory in a type of conceptual freeze-framing. I manipulate the veiled translucency of the resin and oftentimes incorporate cellular drawings to foster surprise, mystery, and wonder and pique the viewers’ discovery of new realities, bringing that which is often overlooked or under the surface to the forefront. My scientific inquiry of the underlying energy and beauty in nature directs my unique alchemy in both my studio artwork as well as my site-specific, public installations.

One of my recent series of work simultaneously focuses on the ubiquitous barcode of our contemporary consumer-based milieu and the microscopic, cellular world of being. By using an intricate casting and lamination processes of resin with unexpected embedments encased within, I manipulate the graphic construct of the barcode into a captivating visual paradigm and then incorporate my hand drawn interpretations of carefully chosen cellular imagery to augment and heighten the intended effect and message of each piece/installation. 

My painting is a influenced by the power of nature. I paint first with water colors, then with encaustic paint, layers of hot beeswax, pigment and resin. I coerce it onto paintings as a hot, drippy, excitable mess. It changes quickly from a molten liquid to hard, solid matter. Heat is used throughout the process, especially to fuse layers of wax together. Encaustic painting is an alchemical process of extreme versatility. It is both additive and subtractive. It can be painted, sculpted, or moulded. Between the layers the process is quite unpredictable. 

My focus is the human figure. My monotypes, colographs and linocuts are generally bright colors and abstracted images of the figure intended to evoke a recognizable feeling, thought or state of being. My etchings are more subdued in color and representational in style.

In my work I take a hard heavy material and transform it into a lighter more flowing material. My work expresses the idea that metal can appear weightless and challenge the traditional concepts of balance and space. The use of the material and the circle, which can be found in most of my work, invokes a sense of continuousness, calm and tranquility.

Eileen Downey was born San Francisco and received her art education at UC Berkeley with B.A. and M.A. degrees in painting. There she studied under Karl Kasten, Erle Loran, and John Haley and was greatly influenced in figurative style painting by her teacher, David Park. Prior to that she studied painting with Ruben Tam at the Brooklyn Museum School of Art. Later in her career, she returned to the academic world to receive an M.A. in drama. As a representational painter in the gestural style, her subjects are landscape, figures, and figures in landscape. Ms. Downey's work has been seen in solo and group exhibitions throughout the San Francisco Bay Area. Also, she has exhibited nationally and internationally.

Bits and pieces of the places I have seen suggest an imagined place that emerges.

I am struck aesthetically by patterns, by shear division of space; and I strive for a balance between whimsy and structure.

This series combines partial photographic images with acrylic on canvas. Man-made and nature-made elements intertwined.

I like to work from a richly textured mixed media base and paint forward to whatever abstract or representational image develops.