Lia Walker: capstone

Abstract

The artist's statement: Adorned in dreamlike brushstrokes, found objects, and a palimpsest of text, my artwork is the aftertaste of experience. My artistic practice addresses themes of sentimentality and nostalgia through the breakdown of suburban landscapes. Imagery such as houses, telephone poles, wind turbines and domestic interiors act as a vessel to explore my relationship to memory, self and other. I believe that relationships aren't only formed with people but also with place. The paintings I create reconnect me to places that I might only encounter presently in my memories and invite the viewer to consider how they interact with memory in their own lives. Acrylic is the base for my paintings, but mixed media always seems to sneak into my artwork. You'll notice elements such as glitter glue, oil pastel, colored pencil and charcoal. My work is inescapably mixed media and so is my creative process. I jump between canvas, printmaking, cardboard, 3d ingredients, sketching and embossing metal. The different mediums in my practice inform each other and appear across my larger body of work in true multidisciplinary fashion. Most importantly, I save found objects from various locations I've visited, lived in or passed through. For me, a "found object" can be anything from receipt paper, trash off the ground, tags from teabags and thrift store clothes, trinkets gifted and scraps from parties. These items are evidence of time passing and my participation in it. My latest body of work involves scraps and sentiments I've collected over the past four years parallel to my time spent working on my BFA. In February of 2025, I placed individual collected items into small ziploc plastic bags. In this format, the objects were sealed off from each other and compartmentalized. Presently, while I might be surrounded by an archive of memories, they have lost their potency and organization. As life continues, memories and junk I've collected fall into place and arrange themselves much differently. The series I am working on now attempts to visualize what happens when we cannot let go or allow things to transmute and take other form. Fragments that have no real connection to one another are layered together randomly to represent a lived experience that lasts longer than one moment, place, house, relationship or object.