The visual world of Charlotte McGowan- Griffin is a universe full of riddles and fantasy. In her works she combines stories of the good and the bad, like we remember them from the fairytales of the Gebrüder Grimm, with the mystic and even threatening atmosphere of stories in the likes of Edgar Allen Poe. This results in a grotesque world of pictures from an empire of shadows.

With a special knife the artist cuts tiny and complex structures out of tons of papersheets, forms them into space altering sculptures and creates a three-dimensional world theatre by that.

The concept of the artist for her paperwork is described by her as follows:
Cutting in - as opposed to cutting out - is for me a more precise description of what I am attempting with my three dimensional works. Here, I am not seeking to draw an image out of paper, but rather to make incursions into the "visible surface" of the material, as a way to tether a moment of my own inner (conscious and unconscious) processes. The interaction between outward (expressive) push and the push inward, is particularly at play in my recent works which feature spirals or vortices: This dynamic dualism parallels others (light/dark, positive/negative, hidden/revealed...) which are always at work in the classic paper-cut silhouette.
(Charlotte McGowan-Griffin)