David B. Smith Gallery

Artist Statement:

Christina Empedocles, born and raised in Ann Arbor, Michigan, discovered her love of nature on early morning bird watching trips in the fourth grade. After graduating from Oberlin College in Ohio, she started her career as a geologist in San Francisco before transitioning to fine art, receiving her MFA in painting from California College of the Arts in 2008.

Empedocles uses obsessive realism in an attempt to recapture her early fascination of the natural world, mixing idealized images and reality in a unique perspective. By folding and cutting images, using sculpture, painting and collage, she records personal moments and impressions, enhanced by the ephemera of everyday. Her work is the result of hours of looking – contrasting the nostalgic fantasy of idealized memory and the intense focus of the realistic image.

 Christina has been awarded a public art project at the University of California, San Francisco, and has had her work included in Manifest’s International Drawing Annual, Studio Visit Magazine, and Color & Color. She currently shows in Denver, San Francisco and New York.