Quana Cannon

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.

Down to My Fingertips

oil on wood panel, oil on canvas, unfired stoneware clay

Jewett Art Gallery, Jewett Sculpture Court, Jewett Hallway Galleries

lime green, white, and red painting with swirling forms

gray clay bowl partly collaposed to make overlapping rounded forms

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.

yellow/magenta/blue painting of the back of an ear and grayish painting of rounded and folded clay sculpture, both showing similar forms; small gray clay object rests on small pedestal between them

small light gray crumpled clay vessel cradled in two hands

3 objects arranged in a diagonal on a white wall: small painting of blurry face; small painting of bright yellowish swirls; clear shelf with small tangle of gray clay

two hands cradling a small gray tangle of clay tubular forms

close up on orange, magenta, and cream painted forms

close up on yellowish forms painted over cream with bluish and reddish splotches

close up on red paint over cream and light blue

collection of light and dark gray clay vessels, variously folded and broken, resting in a pile on a white pedestal

top down view of grouping of light and darker gray vessels, variously crumpled; the largest one has broken clay bits in its bowl

to see more work by Quana: portfolio | @loqomotion

<< previous artist | back to Tender Instincts | next artist >>

Page updated

Report abuse