My recent work examines our dual relationship with place, which is embedded deeply in our experiences, and the process of searching for identity within that framework. The process of human beings passing time within a place also inevitably changes the place itself; each receives an impression of the other. Much how water subtly changes a location, human beings continually interact with the places they live, and both are inexorably transformed. My work draws on connections to places meaningful to myself, searching for how place has created an impact.

 

Time passing generates the history and identity associated with place. My mark-making process is intended to make the work, like landscape, feel as though it has existed for millennia. Drops from pools of inky water, and traces of where it evaporated remain, leaving patterning and reticulation behind. These remnants fascinate me. They resemble waters’ passage through the world in the form of rivers and streams. Searching out and tracing these marks in order to divine their history references water as a source of my inspiration in this work. There is a duality to water’s presence. Ice, soil erosion, or storms may be unsettling, even dangerous, but one cannot live without water.

 

The fragile paper is hung away from the wall, making it move and rustle. These papers exist at the intersection of multiplicity and originality. Combined, they present as a single piece, as though seeing an aerial view of landscape, or the division of a survey map. My work functions as both whole and fragment, exposing its vulnerability to disruption. A rupture in the illusion of wholeness occurs where we can see the edges of the papers, revealing movement. The fragility of the material and its constant motion references transience, both of landscape and of the viewer’s relationship with it. This begins to reference my own experience of place as a series of multiple, fragmentary, subjective moments, or even as longing for those places. It also questions how we equate bodies and landscape as each touches on and interacts with the other. As one moves about the gallery, much like water running in its course, the work disconnects from the whole, and is experienced as a series of fragmentary moments. I consider this work to be a creation of such moments brought together in one place, informed by thoughts of desire, longing, and a search for completion.

 

Kelsey Stephenson is a Canadian artist, based out of Edmonton, Alberta. She received her Bachelor of Design from the University of Alberta in 2011, and a Masters in Fine Art from the University of Tennessee in 2016. Her work has been shown in Canada and internationally, most recently in the Tokyo International Mini Print Triennale in Japan, the 1st International Print Biennial Łódź 2016 in Poland, and the International Print Triennial Krakow–Falun 2016, in Sweden.

 

Kelsey's recent work examines our relationship with place, the history of changes made to landscape and people within a specific location over time. Throughout, the impact of water on both is shown, leaving an impression even when absent form the final pieces. Her work draws on fragments, connections to places meaningful to the artist, searching for a way to bring multiple pieces together into a whole.