Soudan 5
Oil Painting
Created by
Virginia Bradley
Oil and resin on stretched silk canvas, the sides of which are painted.
The Soudan paintings were based on the recent geological findings in the Soudan Iron Mine in Tower, Minnesota. The found imagery from the minerals in the mine was a departure point for the abstract works. The ancient waters in the mine hosts organisms that formed 2.7 billion years ago, when a sea was thought to have covered the region. Geological formations found in the mine are similar to photographic imagery found on the surface of Mars. The chemical processes in the ancient waters tie to the artist's use of alchemy in her studio. She also has a personal tie to the Tower area as she spent many summers in nearby Ely, Minnesota.
The paintings use stretched transparent silk as a structure. The silk was used as a metaphor for the translucence of water. The oil paint is poured, pooled. and manipulated with brush work to form a frozen moment of chemical transformation.
The Soudan paintings were based on the recent geological findings in the Soudan Iron Mine in Tower, Minnesota. The found imagery from the minerals in the mine was a departure point for the abstract works. The ancient waters in the mine hosts organisms that formed 2.7 billion years ago, when a sea was thought to have covered the region. Geological formations found in the mine are similar to photographic imagery found on the surface of Mars. The chemical processes in the ancient waters tie to the artist's use of alchemy in her studio. She also has a personal tie to the Tower area as she spent many summers in nearby Ely, Minnesota.
The paintings use stretched transparent silk as a structure. The silk was used as a metaphor for the translucence of water. The oil paint is poured, pooled. and manipulated with brush work to form a frozen moment of chemical transformation.