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    "A woman without a past is like a man without a future...."

                STATEMENT

                    I studied art at Kent State University.  It took me ten years to begin making

            art in the studio.  That interim was spent modeling and working in films while living in

            Europe and Morocco.  My influences were not so much academic as from experience

            and the installation work being done abroad at that time.

                    I began my mixed-media career in Los Angeles doing political and environmental

            pieces, my first show being titled "The Downwind Series".  Eva Hesse showed me I didn't

            have to always use paint, Jenny Holzer's influence brought text into the work, Marcel Duchamp

            allowed the humor, Anselm Kiefer the scope and scale, Joseph Beuys the pathos,  Ann

            Hamilton the grace and Julian Schnabel said "just keep swimming"...

                    I have returned to painting recently in a manner which is afforded by the new products

            available now to artists.  The paint is sculptural and objectified and can be assembled and

            manipulated in much the same way as the items I have used historically in my work.

                    I am also continuing a long-term project called "Not My Mother's Quilt".  This series

            consists of my version of large scale "quilts" constructed with expanded media.  They are

            based from spending my childhood cutting out the squares for my mother's fund raising quilts

            on our Ohio farm.  Each "quilt" has its own history and story so it is a launching pad for more

            epic poetry.  I truly believe I paint because I cannot sing and painting is the fall back position

            for the failed poet...

                        Nancy Gifford