bio, statement, exhibitions and textiles
Kirsty Warman is an artist, an illustrator and creative based in Dunedin, New Zealand, graduating with a Bachelor of Visual Arts from Dunedin School of Art in 2012.
My work considers the human condition. It explores a subject by challenging the idea of an identity which can appear absolute and palpable, whilst being inhibited with uncertainty and the limitations of a memory. It is beyond the movement of an abstract painterly thread that the statement strives to free itself from the traditional realism and historical conventions of figurative painting. In allowing a single mark to inform the next in the orchestration of the ground, with the impetus to discover figurative painting through a recurring craft towards abstraction. Essentially, there is a struggle between chance and critical awareness on the painted canvas characterising the perception that the figure cannot be without abstraction, nor can it be determined without the arbitrary. The mark making is purposefully derived from a surrealistic drawing process which runs parallel to the painting practice. Incessantly, the lines and pattern from within the drawings appear in the painted works allowing the viewer to observe beyond the literal confines a reconstructed identity.