Artist Statement

I produce a variety of media including painting, sculptural forms and installation. In all these works, I am concerned with unearthing the roots of being human as an aspect of the wholeness of existence. In our increasingly high-speed virtual world, I go beneath the smooth and shiny surfaces. I use my brushes and other tools to quietly and patiently explore the depth of consciousness and bring to light the rawness, textures and layers of life. I am an artist-archaeologist and my artwork is a collection of visual field notes.

Los Angeles-based art critic Shana Nys Dambrot has written the following about my work:

“Sigrid Orlet’s background in the field of Creativity Studies had her ‘investigating the complex nature of symbol formation in deep scientific inquiry. . . .’ And her moving and innovative mixed media paintings and sculptural installations give literal and allegorical form to this conceptual foundation.

“Using hefty, dimensional materials like burlap, and dried plant roots, and favoring a richly, fertile palette of earth and autumnal shades along with sensual, distressed, painterly surfaces and salient pieces of text, Orlet both honors and generates the symbolism of a kind of pagan art history.

“Spiritual rather than dogmatic, her work is experiential, multisensory, dimensional, temporal, devotional, and scientific. In pursuit of an aesthetic beyond meaning, it asks ‘what happens when you go to a place of not knowing?,’ demonstrating a willingness to question even one’s own most firmly held beliefs—including about what art can be.”

 Education

2006 PhD Saybrook Graduate and Research Center, San Francisco, CA
2001 MA Phillips Graduate Institute, Encino, CA

Bio

Sigrid Orlet was born near Cologne, Germany but moved to Los Angeles in 1985. She is currently an Artist-in-Residence at Studio Chanel Islands Art Center in Camarillo, CA. She earned an MA degree in Psychology and Art Therapy from Phillips Graduate Institute in Encino, CA in 2001 and a PhD in Psychology from Saybrook Graduate School and Research Center in San Francisco, CA in 2006.

In 2006 her PhD dissertation titled “Heuristic and semiotic study of incubation through art-based inquiry” was published. She subsequently published an essay on “An expanding view of incubation” in the Creativity Research Journal, 20(3), pp. 297-308 in 2008.

Orlet is on the artist roster of Los Angeles-based Gallery Yoram Gil. She is also a member of the Los Angeles Art Association and the Women’s Caucus for Art.

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