ARTIST STATEMENT
Intuitive artist exploring what’s inside through art. My work fluctuates with how I’m feeling and what I’m thinking, like a journal entry. Ideas and thoughts bubble up and are released into textural shapes and colors. My subconscious plays a crucial role in transforming my subject matter and guides me through the process of creating art. Playing with photography, texture-building materials, color, and movement to express what can’t easily be translated into words. –These works are part of the Connection Series, which came out of the need to understand my intense craving to connect with people and nature since the pandemic began. One afternoon during the height of the pandemic I spent some time reflecting at my nearby park, thinking about the relationship between people and outdoor spaces. I wanted to create a representation of these spaces, the people they connect and the impact it has on our psyche.
ABOUT THE ARTIST
I discovered art and painting early on in life. Soon after my family immigrated to Chicago from St. Petersburg, Russia via New York I met an artist who took me under her wing and before long I became ¬in love with color, shapes, and the evolution of a painting. I continued my art education at Columbia College of Chicago and soon after receiving my BFA moved out to the Pacific Northwest and fell in love with travel and discovering places that the western world seemed to have forgotten. These experiences and discoveries are the main source of my work in painting, printmaking, and sculpture. Key turning points in my art career were both ignited by distant artist residencies, one as a teenager and a recipient of a summer scholarship to Ox-bow in Saugatuck, MI and the second, as an adult at El Levante in Rosario, Argentina. Finding your path in your art while being immersed in unfamiliar places really allows you to focus, while being incredibly humbled. I play with different mediums and textures to achieve depth and layers in her canvases and prints. Brilliant colors and textures go beyond the flat surface and allow you to experience another dimension.
© Raya Dukhan