Kariann Fuqua

It is human nature to search for an individual connection to the landscape. My work is an investigative study in ideas of place and location, and how we as humans interact with a specific locale. I believe it is the small details, like a spill of liquid or the crackling of paint, that define a location. By these traces and residue, evidence remains of human existence and the passage of time. With my paintings, I am creating a new kind of map, a map that documents this interaction.

Observation and the act of seeing are such an integral part of my work. It is this obsessiveness with looking and staring that has led to a fascination in the small details that are often overlooked. Currently, I have been exploring the forgotten urban landscape in Chicago. My association with place has always been a transitory one. Having moved so often, migrating has had an impact on my sense of stability. My relationship with my current location has been one of familiarity, in the process, and foreignness. By combining stains left by the process of time and wear, and references to architecture that is manmade and more permanent, I am creating a dichotomy of opposing gestures in an attempt to reclaim that familiarity.

I use jarring and seemingly odd combinations of color to represent two varying ideas in my work, the accidental and the intentional. Using simultaneous contrast, a phenomenon of color theory, I am enhancing this juxtaposition. I further exploit these two differences by using two different kinds of paint, both oil and enamel. Oil, easily manipulated and changeable, creates the stable architectural backgrounds, and enamel, so fluid and uncontrollable, represents the splatter, spill, or other accidental mark.

Through my exploration of materials with paint and color, I am establishing a dialogue about place and our consistently fluctuating positions in it.