Victoria Pacimeo
Victoria Pacimeo · Source: New York Artists Circle · Rights retained by the original rights holders
- Medium
- Acrylic Paint, Fiber, Found Objects, Oil Paint, Watercolor
- Practice
- Collage, Mixed Media, Painting, Stitching, Works on Paper
Vicki began her first job when she was only 16, as an apprentice typesetter, moving on to illustration, graphic design, and later as Associate Art Director for Vogue magazine. Freelance beckoned, and she follows and thri… Full biography
Biography
Vicki began her first job when she was only 16, as an apprentice typesetter, moving on to illustration, graphic design, and later as Associate Art Director for Vogue magazine. Freelance beckoned, and she follows and thrives until one day decides to sketch in a life class again. This return to roots frees her into a diversity of body image, shape, age, size, and color, and leads to an exhibition of her first series: “WaterColoredWomen”.
After too many years in the fashion, beauty, and fragrance industry, Vicki escaped. She found herself at the Women’s Rites Center in NYC, studying feminist theology, anthropology, depth psychology, and ancient and contemporary ritual. She designed and facilitated “Women Spirited Recovery”, a support group blending ritual with recovery methods; a sensory approach for healing in the community.
Vicki introduces “Seeing Each Other into Beauty” at Union Theological Seminary, NYC on International Women’s Day 2003. This workshop uses the artist/model relationship as an experiential setting, inviting each participant to embody both the art and the art-making. Clothing is optional and becomes a container for shifting body image issues. The WaterColoredWomen series has been used by the Institute of Core Energetics in group therapy to facilitate reparative, somatic healing processes.
Expanding into abstraction, collage, and mixed media, the Fates bring an irresistible interruption: a chance to paint in classical Renaissance style, the carved horses of a 1922 carousel restoration in Dumbo. Jane’s Carousel is now on view in Brooklyn Bridge Park. During this yearlong project, she begins to exhibit her paintings in Dumbo, onto Chelsea, circling out through New York, New Jersey, and California.
Artist statement
As a child I am fascinated with the moon, reaching out and calling, pronouncing it “Mun, mun!” My body is my canvas - I paint my face, adorn myself, and decorate my room. Struggling for identity I create a persona: false but powerful, it preserves me for a later time.
Lunar cycles guide the rhythms of my process. The moon is our natural mood changer, waxing and waning, inviting us to spiral along. Reaching back through ancestry and mythology, I discover the power of attuning to each season. Sensing into the colors, scents, and mood of the day . . . I paint, about being a woman, in search of she who was meant to be. I follow what I’ve come to call The Women, symbolizing a fierce ancient and contemporary feminine-ist energy daring me to say, Divine.
Nature shows me the backlash of damage to the earth that mirrors the abuse of women. As a witness, I use artmaking to move through grief and rage, often switching to the back of the stretched canvas as a symbol of surrendering to the hidden, the inarticulate, and the unspeakable. Below the pleasure of beauty, the Gorgon demands to be included. She insists I mix image and text, an art form I’ve always disliked. If the moon is in Gemini, I obey; making art can alter ego, becoming an altar to authenticity (the wooden frame even offers a shelf for objects). I wonder about natural and unnatural consequences, as all things are of the earth. Mixing media, collage, detritus - all are welcome, celebrating coexistence. Paradox wins.
