DVAA Member since january 2021
Krista Dedrick-Lai
Website:
About:
Krista Dedrick-Lai is a visual artist whose work is rooted in emotions, bodily experiences and identity. Storms swirl and figures struggle (or surrender) in Krista’s paintings, as they navigate chaotic environments. After earning her BFA from Tyler School of Art, Krista made Philadelphia her home and now lives and works just steps from the Italian Market (of Rocky fame!) with her husband and young son. Her work has been shown in a number of Philadelphia galleries such as Space 1026 and Practice Gallery. Krista’s work has also been exhibited in Louisiana, New Jersey and Delaware, as well as virtual spaces such as I Like Your Work and Dear Artists. In 2021 a poster Krista created in collaboration with Mural Arts and Streets Dept was collected by the Philadelphia Museum of Art.
Artist Statement:
“My paintings and mixed media pieces begin with feelings-- emotions so visceral they are physically felt. At times I work instinctively; crouching over paper with charcoal, ink, and glue…like an early human crouching over a fire. Exorcising my painful memories, regret and confusion. Sometimes my motivation is simply an intense, chaotic rush of meaningfulness that only I can sense. Or a sweet moment to be savored, like my child’s small arms wrapped around my neck; A love or a longing that makes my blood hum. I ride the weather until it passes, or until my back and neck demand I stop.
I think a lot about relationships and memory. The way fear of loss and grief can prevent us from truly connecting. The icy dagger-to-the-heart of risk; a fundamental part of truly loving. And the unmatched joy of being seen and still chosen. Memories of love and loss are like photocopies of photocopies, with captions in a foreign language. The images are blurry. I struggle to make out the words. I can never entirely translate them. I am left with a residual sense of what it was like… how I felt… what the impact was. This remnant is both more, and less, than the sum of its parts.
When painting, I often begin with a wash of hot color like orange or magenta. I use Pyrrole Orange especially, because of its energy and heat. These hot grounds are the inner core of my paintings. I stabilize this firey base with the blues of water and sky. Sometimes I pave over them with blues, purples and greens so dark they are almost black. Nevertheless this hot lifeblood peeks out from beneath so many of my paintings, reminding me it’s always there.
From the tumultuous energy of bold brush strokes and energetic marks imagery emerges: hands grasping or figures in a state of struggle or surrender. A similar struggle ensues with my mixed media pieces: the recognizable is subsumed by chaos only to be overtaken by the precision of a found object, rooting the piece in reality again. Over time my landscapes are becoming more figural and my figures more like landscape. A reaching inward and a reaching outward that never fully meet.”
Exhibitions at DVAA:
