Rebecca Hermann is a painter, animator, explorer, and decoder of the universe. She holds an MFA in painting from Cranbrook Academy of Art in Bloomfield Hills, Michigan and teaches animation and computer graphics at Metropolitan Community College in Omaha, Nebraska. She is one third of the animation group called the Animutts. She enjoys dividing and combining her time between the complementary thought processes of both analog and digital investigation. Lately, she has been traveling to Southern France and other European countries to collect visual raw material. Statement “My paintings have evolved into a type of recording system of symbols I have developed over the years. These "symbols" or "touchstones" are drawn and then made into stamps and the stamps get recorded layer by layer onto the canvas. I think of my paintings as snapshots of glimpsed clarity. They are the result of using an obsessive layering process to weave some of my visual memory fragments into physical form. I have always thought of time as more of a build up or accumulation rather than something that passes. Animation process and painting process feed into each other and I continuously find myself in the middle of choreographing acrylic on canvas, paint and ink on paper, movement of painted paper pieces. I am amazed at what develops in one medium when I'm focusing on another medium. Most of my inspiration comes from direct observation, so painting and drawing from life is an integral part of my whole process. I have lately been inspired by the ancient, rugged Ardèche region of Southern France. I paint, photograph and draw whatever flora, fauna, dolmen, menhir, or Romanesque church happens to come into my vision.I'm very interested in memory and perception and belief systems so some of these drawings become part of a permanent vocabulary in the form of rubber stamps. I stamp acrylic paint in many layers of repeated patterns. Each random layer determines what happens next, so that accident and coincidence play a role in what determines the final layer, as well as my own conscious decisions. The painted pieces on paper are acting as "constituents", an ongoing collection of forms that have come from my observations. They accumulate and form different configurations each time I install them. As part of the installation process, I photograph at intervals so the new formation can become part of an ongoing animation.” - Rebecca Hermann