Education Studies major, Studio Art minor
I am an interdisciplinary artist who works between painting, drawing, sculpture, and photography to explore motifs of intimacy, loss, and natural regeneration. My creative impulse is a process and pursuit of love – an act of devotion to capture fleeting moments of life and its tenderness.
More specifically, I am interested in the boundaries and implications of a portrait. Calling to classical portraiture, which imbues qualities of life and value onto its subjects, many of my works delve into the intimate particularity and likeness of an individual. However, my range of “sitters” span far beyond the traditional human figure. As an oil painter and potter with undeniable roots in digital fanart, I reference the histories and adaptabilities of my mediums to play with conventions of worth, legibility, and subjecthood in portraiture. Whether tracing the contours of the human form, the trunk of a tree, or a lopsided clay vessel, I turn to portraiture to work through my bodily experience of seeing, feeling, and knowing. Driven by the manual instinct to create, I hope for my works to physically embody lives of their own.
oil on wood panel, oil on canvas, unfired stoneware clay
Jewett Art Gallery, Jewett Sculpture Court, Jewett Hallway Galleries
Down To My Fingertips indulges in the ache and longing of known impermanence, while offering a space to memorialize what we hold dear. The project consists of a series of oil paintings paired with raw, unfired clay vessels. Each painting serves as a representation and immortalization of its fragile, yet infinitely regenerative, ceramic counterpart. In some iterations, I invited loved ones to take my place at the pottery wheel, and painted both the creator and their creation. Traces of human touch are embedded within the physicality of the works – in the exertion of force and energy onto the clay, and in the movement of decisive, active brushstrokes. As such, they serve as a manifestation of cumulative lived histories, invested time and care, and my own intimate relationships. I am drawn to unfired stoneware clay for its unforgiving, humbling fragility, its forgiving, hopeful, and cyclical ability to return to wet earth, as well as its lack of commodifiable utility. Through oil painting, I cling onto hopes of preserving my mortal subject’s identity through abstracted, essentialized portraits, acknowledging the history of portraiture as a means of solidifying legitimacy and legacy.
This body of work ultimately centers my first serious experiences with grief, death, and acceptance after losing both my childhood best friend and a family member within the same month last year. I ruminate on unpredictability, fragmented memories, and ephemerality through a process of obscuring and representing subjects I know intimately. At the heart of my vibrant color palettes and humble clay forms, I grapple with what is kept, negotiated, and left behind when one experiences loss.
to see more work by Quana: portfolio | @loqomotion