ARTIST STATEMENT
This work is part of a series confronting the violence embedded in language and expectation how women’s bodies and emotions are labeled, disciplined, and instructed to remain small. Quiet Piggy takes its power from reclamation. What was once meant to diminish becomes a site of resistance, endurance, and presence. In these figures, silence is not submission. One holds tenderness close, refusing to abandon softness even when it is mocked or weaponized against her. The other turns inward and upward, breathing through pressure, her body shaped by wind rather than restraint. Both carry visible traces of exposure and survival. Their emotional weight is not decorative. It is evidence.
I am motivated by how women are taught to internalize harm quietly to absorb words meant to shame, to accept reduction as normal. These works reject that erasure. They insist that vulnerability is not weakness and that gentleness is not compliance. To feel deeply, to protect what is fragile, and to remain present in a culture that rewards hardness is a form of dissent. By centering emotional realism, I challenge the idea that resistance must be loud to be legitimate. Sometimes defiance looks like holding. Sometimes it looks like breathing. Sometimes it looks like refusing to disappear. These works stand as witness and refusal. Voices are not hushed here. They are sustained, visible, and unerasable.
ABOUT THE ARTIST
Grant is a contemporary figurative artist based in Wichita, Kansas. Working primarily in colored pencil, her practice centers on emotional realism, examining vulnerability, identity, and the quiet forms of resistance embedded in the body and face. Her work often explores themes of endurance, softness as strength, and the tension between internal experience and external expectation. Grant is known for creating intimate, psychologically charged works that invite prolonged viewing. Her drawings balance technical precision with emotional depth, positioning realism not as imitation but as a tool for truth telling. Through subtle gestures, expressions, and symbolism, her work confronts cultural narratives surrounding gender, silence, and resilience.
In addition to gallery exhibitions, Grant has participated in juried shows, curated projects, and collaborative exhibitions, including work shown during Miami Basel. Her practice engages with contemporary figurative discourse and socially engaged themes, and her work has been featured in interviews and media highlighting her approach to emotional portraiture and the role of art as a site of personal and political inquiry. Grant continues to develop bodies of work that challenge viewers to slow down, witness, and engage with emotional realities often left unspoken.
© S. Grant