E R I C A K O N R A D
Contemporary Art
Portfolio
Fractured
This exhibit is broken into three parts. My attempt being to build a genuinely felt experience, while I travelled back and forth between the realms of well and unwell, health and sickness and whole and broken. This is our existence as humans - to exist in a fractured state, split wide open. A movement, a dance, between the two realms that I have tried to relay through my paintings. I started this series in early 2018, with a focus on lyrical expression and the feelings that arise from the emotional response directly related to music - a fleeting beautiful feeling. But this exhibit took a drastic turn, as does life with the varied paths we travel; the unexpected changes of direction we take along the way, or that are thrown our way. This series is fractured, as my practice was fractured, as my life was fractured before diagnosis, with the diagnosis and during treatment. I found a lump in my breast, got tested and while facing a life threatening diagnosis of breast cancer, my artwork took a dramatic turn from lyrical, light, calm paintings to chaotic expression, melancholic mark making, and an interplay between calm and angst. During diagnosis and all the uncertainty and quick decision making, I was trying to elicit deep peace and serenity during this turbulent time, and these next series of paintings represent the attempt to capture that elusive feeling, and my attempt for balance - both within myself and on the canvas. As I was undergoing the harsh stages of treatment, I was experimenting with different ways of expressing myself to re-conciliate the varied, stormy emotions I was having. The high and lows, the beautiful and the ugly. I experimented with plexiglass and soon revealed mark making with encaustic on glass panels. These proved to be clearer, more defined, sharper images, something I was searching for during this troubling time, expressing the clarity I was seeking throughout my healing. The last paintings in the series, on plexiglass were my attempt to gain some sort of control over my situation, a focussed emphasis on the rhythm and resolution I was trying to find within myself. My life, body and spirit is now fractured. However, I believe that meaning is not found in the material realm. Meaning is left when everything else is stripped away. I have learnt this through this experience - how to exist, while life is falling apart, while one is fractured or broken or split in pieces, and how to then put back together the pieces. Painting has helped me do this.