ARTIST STATEMENT
My paintings explore introspection, anxiety, and connection through a playful bending of space, time, and bodies. I create ambiguous narratives set in claustrophobic residential architecture featuring figures who oscillate between stagnation and acting out. The characters I depict are desperate to break cycles and self-actualize, often sabotaging themselves in the process. Moments of wonder twist with apprehension in scenes that attempt to capture life’s intensity and tenderness. These situations are born from my fascination with contemporary existential dread and the cultural tendency to obsessively turn inward when the world spins out of control. Although I find this deeply human, it is ultimately dysfunctional and darkly humorous. My work examines the pitfalls of this compulsion as well as the desire to connect with something beyond oneself. This results in organized compositions ecstatic with saturated color, rhythmic shapes, and vivid light, to evoke feelings familiar yet strange and tell stories unreal yet true.
ABOUT THE ARTIST
Antonia Constantine was born in Grand Rapids, Michigan. She is a recent graduate of Indiana University with an MFA in Painting and received a BFA from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago. Constantine was a 2024 AXA Art Prize Finalist and a recipient of the Chautauqua Visual Arts Teaching Fellowship as well as a Bloomington Arts Commission Emerging Artist Grant. Her work is featured in Issue No.159 of New American Paintings and has been shown at the New York Academy of Art’s Wilkinson Gallery in New York City, Jeffrey Breslow Gallery in Chicago, and Racecar Factory in Indianapolis.
© Antonia Constantine