Artist Statement
Mya Naidoo is an artist working primarily in oil paint, watercolour, and charcoal. Her work explores the subconscious distortions of memory and familiar imagery, as a journal through her life. The idea of forgetting or misremembering is a very familiar concept to the artist. Mya often associates certain objects with a memory to keep them alive, these are usually plants from the event.
Her work distorts these plants and other related scenes into complexly layered compositions. By purposefully distorting these objects, and therefore their connected memories, she has found a way of preserving them before they change on their own. Naidoo’s favourite aspect of her work is when these abstracted compositions trigger a forgotten memory in a viewer. The goal of these pieces has developed from preserving one’s own memories, into creating something that allows others to uncover their personal subconscious distortions.