Painted with oil and cold wax on canvas, the paintings of Kristy Luck hover between abstraction and representation, the natural world and the potential of a world imagined, a paradigm that is both mythic and personal. In these works, representation is an entry point, while abstraction opens the work to the supernatural and the ineffable. Indications of environment, such as landscape, estuaries, flora and other natural forms, appear and then recede into grounds of color.

The environments of Luck’s paintings, feel suspended at dawn or dusk, times of day when there are no direct light sources and shadows become diffused. Dawn and dusk have a way of equalizing color as well as collapsing the figure/ground relationship. For many, this liminality is the most psychologically introspective time of the day, a feeling that resonates in Luck’s paintings.

Her color palette also hints at the natural world while simultaneously pulling the viewer back to full awareness that we are looking at paint on canvas. Evident artifacts of process, such as texture, brush marks, feathered edges of transparent and opaque paint application further expand the experiential bridge between the natural world and the nature of painting.

Words and image via Odd Ark