Artist's Statement --

"Having figured out I was an atheist early on, my spirituality has always centered around the natural world. I saw animals as being emissaries from that world, a bridge between the unknowable and us, and I instinctively turned toward them when seeking answers to all the big questions.  Inevitably animals helped me contextualize my life as a whole, and though I grew up in Brooklyn nature was never far from my thoughts.

In one way or another my work has always centered around our relationship to and interpretation of the natural world.  The creatures I depict are obviously man made but they are also very much alive, more "Ecce Homo"  than still life.  For me the religious connection is apt: my paintings function as icons.  There is no narrative.  There is no setting.  They are "prayers made visible", reminders of  different realms,  different possibilities. 

The birds and animals I paint were once described to me as "golems."  That sounds right - the figurines are our cultural dirt, imbued with our collective breath.   In my paintings they come back to life, clumsy and dumb, reminders of divinity discarded." Limor Gasko Jan 2014