“How much has to be first discovered and then suppressed, before we can get to the naked flesh of emotion?”
-Claude Debussy to Robert Godet on December 18, 1911

Resident Amanda Millet-Sorsa expresses the ideas to be developed at her residence in ʻace: I am currently obsessed with cave paintings. My mind has been returning to the essential through looking at the cave paintings, which has inspired the direction of my current work. The urgency of those first marks left in the dark caves and grottos were the first signs of the communication that established the passage of the human being.

I want to know what is essential today for my work to have a presence. Claude Debussy’s thoughts are apt in this regard. I am drawn to the alchemy of working with different materials and surfaces. It has been very important in my development. My goal is to understand the potential of the materials I use through intuition and see what I can do with my sensitivity and touch. This residency working on engraving and the elaboration of a mural installation will give new tools to my understanding of materials and will open the possibility of using collage in my paintings.

STATEMENT OF THE ARTIST
It all starts with a stain. The tactile contact between stretched pigment and its stretched canvas, wavy fabric, or papier-mâché surface, whether with a finger, a brush, or a rag is my starting point. Then images of women, dolls, and creatures begin to emerge. I pay attention to the evolution of these figures and how they face the unknown realms of fear, of loss, of falling, of disappearing. I am interested in transparency and the potential play of layers of paint and collage.