"Held Within the Rocks and Dust" - Whitney Johnson-Lessard

Artist Statement:

Held Within the Rocks and Dust explores the alchemy of painting through the memories and agencies of materials. What are we made of? Our bodies, our fears, our dreams? How are we physically connected to all life and the Earth? What will we become? This group of paintings seeks to find relationships between representation, abstraction, and physicality. Many of the materials in these paintings are repurposed and have had past lives - scrap fabric, gifted paint, found wood, and pigments foraged from kitchen scraps, campfires, and industrial sites. Do these past lives continue to exist? Does their existence change? Do we change with them, and how? Can we guide their future? What kinds of agency do our imaginations have?

Whitney Johnson-Lessard's work is guided by transformation, imagining futures, and relationships with the more-than-human world. She engages with living beings and their temporalities, and is concerned with materiality.

“This project is supported with Arts Dollars funds, provided by the Illinois Arts Council Agency, ArtsPartners of Central Illinois, National Endowment for the Arts, and Community Foundation of Central Illinois.”

The opening reception for this exhibition will be January 3rd, 5-8 p.m.

The work will be on view January 3rd - 31st.

Gallery events are always free and open to the public.