Lilis K'Dair
Portraiture, Encaustic Mixed Media, & Stained Glass
"Nothing contributes so much to tranquilize the mind as a steady purpose - a point on which
the soul may fix its intellectual eye."
- Mary Shelley
About my work:
I have always enjoyed the challenge of capturing convincing likenesses, especially of people and natural objects rich in texture and movement. I am attracted to subjects that appear to be in transition or in a state of growth or decay. Curling leaves, opening flowers, flowing water, wrinkled skin, sweeping folds of tattered fabric, and cracks in glass are some of my favorite subject matter. I find objects with visible wear and tear particularly captivating. Whether bent, stretched, crumpled, or cracked, I am moved by the fact that they have been affected by a force of some kind and have undergone a change. I enjoy drawing attention to the beauty of flowing organic forms; change, time, and experience; and the work and pain required to grow and bear fruit in our life pursuits.
Encaustic & Portraiture:
My drawings and encaustic work are often intense and a little dark. Although I find it thrilling to carefully observe and render my subject matter, my work always gives way here and there to painterly strokes and spatters, or areas of less specificity. In my encaustic work, I often try to amplify the contrast between crisp naturalism and abstraction by fusing materials to the surface. These 3-dimensional protrusions of found objects blur the distinction between what is real and what is illusion. The images have a sense of being trapped in their 2-dimensional surface, reaching out, trying to break free. I scrape, melt, and embed materials into the surface to help reveal the depth of the layered encaustic medium.
Thematically in my drawings and encaustic work, I am interested in our necessity to strike a balance in our lives between comfort and discomfort. I am fascinated by the resilience of people who are living in uncomfortable circumstances, but are managing to find comfort in wholesome and healthy ways. I am equally fascinated by the horrors people experience as a result of being too comfortable or by soothing their discomfort using self-destructive means. While I work, I often draw inspiration from cycles or waves, and seek to unify seemingly disparate subject matter. My drawings and encaustics typically have an eerie, dreamlike quality, incorporating symbolic or metaphorical imagery. I love how this can limit and clarify while simultaneously extending the meaning of a piece. In my experience, this has made my art more accessible and invited interpretation even from viewers who do not normally consider themselves art lovers. Through my drawings and encaustic work I explore the themes of weight vs. delicacy, pain vs. pleasure, clarity vs. confusion, and deterioration vs. growth.
Stained Glass:
My stained glass work has a much different look and feel, as the medium offers me something completely different. The finished pieces tend to be of a lighter, more subdued and decorative nature. Everything about them, start to finish, is cleaner and more controlled. The creative time and energy is expended up front as I carefully craft my composition and select the perfect glass for the piece. The many hours that follow are simply about execution. I no longer have a multitude of creative decisions to make, I have only to make.
This level of preliminary planning followed by lengthy periods of mere execution never appealed to me in the past, but I yearn for it now as a mother of young children. There is control and order to it. It is tidy. As I work in stained glass I find I can gradually clear my head, rather than getting more and more lost in the unpredictable process of repeatedly applying, burning-in, and responding to the encaustic medium, or – similarly exhausting – engaging in the slow, often frustrating buildup of forms in a drawing. Working with glass is a spiritual, meditative practice, allowing me to enjoy being fully present with the necessarily repetitive and meticulous nature of the medium. I love the varied textures and colors of the glass, the weight of it, and the act of scoring, breaking and grinding it to its exact shapes. It is an active, very physical process – similar to that of encaustic – involving the use of my whole body. However, it is also a painstaking process that requires a level of planning, focus, and precision that I am finding appealing in this season of my life. I can become absorbed in it, but not mentally drained.
How do I know a piece is finished?
I consider an artwork finished when, as I step back from it, I feel a rush of excitement and simply stop and stare. After a long creative process fueled by the weighty energy of abrasive cracking, burning or smudging, I suddenly find that I am handling the work very delicately or am hesitant to touch it at all – as though it has suddenly become a living creature; a baby. I want to be with it for a while. I can’t wait to see it again when I have left. It is texturally striking, full of intention, has a sense of movement and a nice play between vibrant colors and neutrals. It holds in it a personal truth, full and complete, and has taken something mundane or painful and made it beautiful, layered and complex.
My favorite pieces are what I like to call “subtly dark” and address more existential themes. When finished, they are lovely enough to draw viewers in and hold their attention, even when difficult feelings are conjured up. A fellow undergrad student once said my artwork “allows people to be with pain.” My work offers opportunities to settle in and get curious about the all-consuming feelings that arise, quite naturally, out of the mere monotony of daily life and the limiting stories we often tell ourselves. I invite people to approach these difficult emotions in an accepting way – without a desire to avoid them, without a sense of urgency or hopelessness, but with the calm of knowing that they are inevitable, necessary, and temporary. My aspiration is to evoke a grounded passion for life in myself and others, and to perpetuate messages around authentic expression, resilience, compassion, and hope.
Encaustic & Portraiture:
My drawings and encaustic work are often intense and a little dark. Although I find it thrilling to carefully observe and render my subject matter, my work always gives way here and there to painterly strokes and spatters, or areas of less specificity. In my encaustic work, I often try to amplify the contrast between crisp naturalism and abstraction by fusing materials to the surface. These 3-dimensional protrusions of found objects blur the distinction between what is real and what is illusion. The images have a sense of being trapped in their 2-dimensional surface, reaching out, trying to break free. I scrape, melt, and embed materials into the surface to help reveal the depth of the layered encaustic medium.
Thematically in my drawings and encaustic work, I am interested in our necessity to strike a balance in our lives between comfort and discomfort. I am fascinated by the resilience of people who are living in uncomfortable circumstances, but are managing to find comfort in wholesome and healthy ways. I am equally fascinated by the horrors people experience as a result of being too comfortable or by soothing their discomfort using self-destructive means. While I work, I often draw inspiration from cycles or waves, and seek to unify seemingly disparate subject matter. My drawings and encaustics typically have an eerie, dreamlike quality, incorporating symbolic or metaphorical imagery. I love how this can limit and clarify while simultaneously extending the meaning of a piece. In my experience, this has made my art more accessible and invited interpretation even from viewers who do not normally consider themselves art lovers. Through my drawings and encaustic work I explore the themes of weight vs. delicacy, pain vs. pleasure, clarity vs. confusion, and deterioration vs. growth.
Stained Glass:
My stained glass work has a much different look and feel, as the medium offers me something completely different. The finished pieces tend to be of a lighter, more subdued and decorative nature. Everything about them, start to finish, is cleaner and more controlled. The creative time and energy is expended up front as I carefully craft my composition and select the perfect glass for the piece. The many hours that follow are simply about execution. I no longer have a multitude of creative decisions to make, I have only to make.
This level of preliminary planning followed by lengthy periods of mere execution never appealed to me in the past, but I yearn for it now as a mother of young children. There is control and order to it. It is tidy. As I work in stained glass I find I can gradually clear my head, rather than getting more and more lost in the unpredictable process of repeatedly applying, burning-in, and responding to the encaustic medium, or – similarly exhausting – engaging in the slow, often frustrating buildup of forms in a drawing. Working with glass is a spiritual, meditative practice, allowing me to enjoy being fully present with the necessarily repetitive and meticulous nature of the medium. I love the varied textures and colors of the glass, the weight of it, and the act of scoring, breaking and grinding it to its exact shapes. It is an active, very physical process – similar to that of encaustic – involving the use of my whole body. However, it is also a painstaking process that requires a level of planning, focus, and precision that I am finding appealing in this season of my life. I can become absorbed in it, but not mentally drained.
How do I know a piece is finished?
I consider an artwork finished when, as I step back from it, I feel a rush of excitement and simply stop and stare. After a long creative process fueled by the weighty energy of abrasive cracking, burning or smudging, I suddenly find that I am handling the work very delicately or am hesitant to touch it at all – as though it has suddenly become a living creature; a baby. I want to be with it for a while. I can’t wait to see it again when I have left. It is texturally striking, full of intention, has a sense of movement and a nice play between vibrant colors and neutrals. It holds in it a personal truth, full and complete, and has taken something mundane or painful and made it beautiful, layered and complex.
My favorite pieces are what I like to call “subtly dark” and address more existential themes. When finished, they are lovely enough to draw viewers in and hold their attention, even when difficult feelings are conjured up. A fellow undergrad student once said my artwork “allows people to be with pain.” My work offers opportunities to settle in and get curious about the all-consuming feelings that arise, quite naturally, out of the mere monotony of daily life and the limiting stories we often tell ourselves. I invite people to approach these difficult emotions in an accepting way – without a desire to avoid them, without a sense of urgency or hopelessness, but with the calm of knowing that they are inevitable, necessary, and temporary. My aspiration is to evoke a grounded passion for life in myself and others, and to perpetuate messages around authentic expression, resilience, compassion, and hope.