Raleigh Gardiner currently lives and works outside of Durham, NC. She teaches Drawing, 2D Design, and Art Appreciation at Wake Technical Community College in Raleigh. She received her M.F.A from the Sam Fox School of Art and Design at Washington University in St. Louis. She attended the School of the Museum of Fine Arts Boston and Tufts University, where she graduated with both a B.F.A. (2009) and Studio Diploma (2010). Upon graduation, Raleigh moved to San Miguel de Allende, Mexico, to live, create and work as a co-manager at the Los Talleres Artist Retreat.
Artist Statement
My work investigates the liminal, intermediary zones of human experience that exist at the thresholds between our perception of reality and our subconscious. I create surrealistic scenarios that I refer to as “mindscapes,” which present vivid, microcosmic visions of the inner theaters of our psychological worlds. My work is heavily influenced by early scientific illustration and 'Cabinets of Curiosity, which sought to convey a vision of the marvelous diversity found within unfamiliar, “exotic” lands. Through a similar visual language, my work reveals the strange and curious inner-workings of the human condition, examining the fluctuating operations of human desire, wonder and fantasy.
My current practice is significantly informed by the psychoanalytic theories of Jacques Lacan, examining his assertion that 'all desire is the desire for the Other'. By looking at the differences between subject and object, Self and Other, and the desire which emerges from the act of their separation, my work proposes that 'fantasy' is ultimate solution to one's authentic desires, which cannot otherwise be fulfilled; in other words, we are only able to satisfy our deepest desires through the immersion into a fantasy state – into the Imaginary realm of experience.
Thus, I create images that present this fantasy, constructing lush, sensory atmospheres where the boundaries between subject and object, human and animal, creature and landscape, Self and Other, remain wholly undifferentiated. Within these spaces (these psychological mindscapes), where the fragments of memory, dreams, and the residues of formative experience intermingle with mythology, I present a space for the renegotiation of identity and the realignment of desire.
My artistic process derives from an intuitive method of experimental creation. In my drawings, I seek to create visual tension through the fluctuation between automatic and intended mark-making, between realism and expression, collage and drawing, and building up and scraping away. By means of this alternation, I experience my artistic production as an act of creative play. Similarly, I express my ideas and concepts through diorama, sculpture, photography, video and mask making. Through whichever media my images take form, I maintain the active play between subject and object, and aim for a convulsive spontaneity in the active journey of their creation.
My current practice is significantly informed by the psychoanalytic theories of Jacques Lacan, examining his assertion that 'all desire is the desire for the Other'. By looking at the differences between subject and object, Self and Other, and the desire which emerges from the act of their separation, my work proposes that 'fantasy' is ultimate solution to one's authentic desires, which cannot otherwise be fulfilled; in other words, we are only able to satisfy our deepest desires through the immersion into a fantasy state – into the Imaginary realm of experience.
Thus, I create images that present this fantasy, constructing lush, sensory atmospheres where the boundaries between subject and object, human and animal, creature and landscape, Self and Other, remain wholly undifferentiated. Within these spaces (these psychological mindscapes), where the fragments of memory, dreams, and the residues of formative experience intermingle with mythology, I present a space for the renegotiation of identity and the realignment of desire.
My artistic process derives from an intuitive method of experimental creation. In my drawings, I seek to create visual tension through the fluctuation between automatic and intended mark-making, between realism and expression, collage and drawing, and building up and scraping away. By means of this alternation, I experience my artistic production as an act of creative play. Similarly, I express my ideas and concepts through diorama, sculpture, photography, video and mask making. Through whichever media my images take form, I maintain the active play between subject and object, and aim for a convulsive spontaneity in the active journey of their creation.