Page 45 - Marlie Burton Roche : Landscape and Bread

ART AND REVOLUTION

came to emanate from my experiences in El Salvador, not only

My artwork as an expression of the terror promulgated by the government-
sponsored military, police, and death squads, but also the incredible resilience of the Salvadoran people
and their determination to see the day of true political and economic justice. My work is sometimes
described as abstract, and at other times as representative of the surrealistic tradition. I do not think

either of these definitions describes what I do. My paintings are often big. I think this might be because
the social issues, with which I am concerned, require ‘big’. But I am not sure. It is just what I do. One
such big painting is Helicóptero. This work is from a series titled IF YOU DON’T WANT TO BE THE
HORSES’ HOOFPRINTS, YOU’VE GOT TO BE THE HOOVES. It is dedicated to Evelio, who was a

grade-one student in a popular school in Chalatenango, El Salvador, when we met him. His home had
been destroyed during a military bombing raid in 1987. We had taken in school supplies to the people in
the area, and Evelio and his classmates drew pictures for us. He called his picture

helicoptero

este techo esta
casa esta destru-

ido por el

helicoptero

It was a drawing of his home being bombed.

My painting Helicóptero is massive in scale, 310 x 200 cm. The media used is oil, painted on very
fine grade linen using a highly polished glazing technique. In this work, as in all the paintings from this

series, I have moved away from the purely non-objective approach, evidenced in my earlier work, to a
representation of some aspects of the human form. But while there is discernment of the human figure in
the paintings, the forms are nedulous and the colours and shapes move back and forth on different planes,
denoting more of an epimorphosis of images than a figurative representation.

Technically, as an artist, I am concerned with the phenomenon of colour and light, however, a critical
aspect, if not justification, of my artwork is now political. We live in a whole world of active and
interactive relationships, our common associative life, that can and should be expressed artistically and it

is impossible to know about the harassment, torture, murder, and starvation of people through terrorism
(be that state terrorism; globalization; or market economics) and as well to be aware that people, like
many of the Salvadorans I know, are working to establish their ideals of social justice and self-reliance,
and not have it affect ones art work.

LANDSCAPE & BREAD MARLIE BURTON-ROCHE 41