KIRISTA TRASK - #7
Artist-in-residence, May-August 2019
Astoria Studio Collective
1010 Duane, upstairs
mixed media
website: kirista-trask.com
​Will be doing a demonstration during the studio tour

​As a seventh generation Oregonian, Trask finds a deep connection to place and incorporates that into her work. Over the past year, she has been focusing her art-making practice on the Long Beach Peninsula and the Columbia River Basin. She translates landscapes into abstraction, blending saturated, opaque colors with translucent washes to evoke “moment” as an emotional experience. Her work is created using a variety of materials, including acrylic, ink, charcoal, pencil, oil pastel, chalk and coffee. Her best work, she says, is done plein air style in stunning locations all over the world—especially in the Pacific Northwest.

Artist Bio
I was 25 when I went back to college to study art and really I had no idea what I was doing. I studied Sculpture at the University of Oregon because I felt an incredible need to be creative bubbling up inside of me. I was a serious student who spent my time in college producing large plaster installations that reflected my own personal life experiences. However after graduation I found myself working in retail, living in a tiny apartment and no closer to identifying as an artist than when I started college. I picked up painting to fill the creative need and over the next ten years taught myself to paint. Through my paintings I am now working to explore not only our relationship to place but the experience of being human in such a challenging time.

Artist's statement
I grew up in Eugene, OR. A child whose roots trace back to the wagon trains on the Oregon Trail, I have an intimate relationship with this great state I call home. That relationship is ultimately the very root of my main source of inspiration - place. More specifically the unseen magic we discover in sacred places. Through my artwork I am seeking to translates subtle moments and landscapes into swirling abstraction, blending saturated, opaque colors with translucent washes to evoke moment as an emotional experience. My work is often created plain air style using a variety of materials, including acrylic, ink, charcoal, pencil, oil pastel, chalk and coffee, in order to react to the spirit of the location at the moment.


<<< About the AVA a-i-r program

---