RAIR | 2019-20

Cedra Wood | albuquerque, NM

In love with the wilderness, and with the equally complex and lonely terrain of the human heart, I make work that marries the elements of both worlds in unlikely ways, creating narrative metaphors for humanity’s relationships with environment. I received my MFA from the University of New Mexico; have been a research fellow at the Center for Art + Environment at the Nevada Museum of Art; received grants from the Land Arts Mobile Research Center and the Elizabeth Greenshields Foundation; and participated in residencies in North America, Australia, and the Arctic. 

I’m primarily a painter. I’m especially invested in wild and inhospitable places, and human relationships with those places. That interest has led me to generate imagery for paintings and drawings through physical and immersive experiences. I sometimes engage in performances, insinuating characters into natural or social environments—mimicking the tactics of other, better-adapted creatures—in order to create metaphorical imagery that is by turns comical, wistful, discomfiting, and surreal. I create labor-intensive costume, props, and tools out of natural materials that speak to place and time. Allegorical paintings and drawings, the final documentation of these experiences and artifacts, dwell on ideas of survival and belonging.

www.cedrawood.com

Roswell Museum and Art Center

Rair exhibition • Cedra Wood "The Water Waxes Deeper Still" • November 23, 2019 - January 12, 2020