Gallery Exhibition: Other Suns by Kirsa Hughes-Skandijs

Other Suns will be on display in the gallery at the Juneau Arts & Culture Center for the month of January and can be viewed during normal business hours: Tuesday-Friday, 9am-5pm and Saturdays, 10am-3pm.
--
Artist Statement: This collection grew naturally from a previous show, Out of Print, that exhibited at Northwind Architects in October 2019. I continued to explore the way that genre illustrations from the fantasy and sci-fi books I grew up reading had shaped my aesthetic and artistic point of view. Just a few months later the COVID-19 lockdown left a lot of us isolated, bored, and worried about the future - and that backdrop was fertile ground for me to continue exploring the escapism of strange worlds and the feeling of being a passive onlooker.

Although I intentionally focused on landscapes, you will find an occasional nod to living beings, whether in the form of a stray animal or an intentional structure. Most of these paintings take a remote point of view, however, that paralleled the feeling of those early days of uncertainty and helplessness in a small landlocked community during a global pandemic. Most of the images were created using acrylic paint, which I enjoyed experimenting with in a variety of ways, mixing it with other mediums to create differing effects and blotting or otherwise interfering with the paint as it dried.

I hope you enjoy Other Suns as much as I’ve enjoyed creating it.