ARTIST STATEMENT
My works address personal and social enigmas and narratives derived from myth, legend, and ritual as they weave into contemporary life. For much of my life I have worked in a variety of mediums. While the work is often abstract there is always a story in the roots. I hope to engage with local libraries, residents and the surrounding land to experience this continued connection.
My work centers on the body and the myriad ways our bodies engage with the world: socially, physically, and biologically. I find immersion in a wide range of natural environments deeply affects my being. The interactions of people with each other and the environment surprises, pleases, and dismays me.
Playing with related ideas in various media and material over the years, I return to connection- of story and behavior, of inherited and accumulated history, of materialiality, of fastenings. I assemble artifacts evocative of memory and fantasy. Lately these connections have been realized through containment as in vessels and books, often bound by hardware.
ABOUT THE ARTIST
I’ve been a maker my entire life, starting with drawings and paintings of plants and wildlife of my rural Illinois childhood.
Degrees in art (Illinois Wesleyan University, Columbia College Chicago), certificates in yoga (asana, anatomy, therapy), and a hunger for travel have informed my activities and my art.
In my professional life, as an adjunct instructor of art and yoga (at Columbia College, Northeastern Illinois University, DePaul University) and a former instructor of children and youth (Chicago Public Schools, Gallery 37, Chicago Park District), I’ve worked with students from around the world and a wide range of ages. My yoga work has led me to those with physical and mental disabilities. I encounter a wide range of personalities, abilities, ages, and desires in my students. I’m convinced that all difficulties can be solved with creative imagination. The act of creating releases possibilities of true freedom.
My life as mother of 2 artists has been a gift of realizing possibilities. Juggling my need to make and the needs of a family taught me discernment and energy management. The path of the past creates a map to the future.
© Nancy VanKanegan