Kira LoMele-Bunce
Artist statement

For my thesis I decided to use my senior year to really explore and free myself of my imaginary limitations on what art is and what it should be. I let my mind wander and create its own world and tried my best to recreate these scenes in my head into my current reality. I have been taught some very important lessons and techniques to becoming the artist I am today. However along the way I developed my own “rules” which were really limitations on me and my work. Which has hindered my creation which is why my thesis is about breaking out of what art “should or shouldn't be” creation for creation sake.

I started to draw when I was in kindergarten. For almost ten years, I only sketched still lives. I thought that painting was my hobby at the time and my goal was to make the objects as real as possible. Choosing this major and studying painting is not only because of my love for it but also because of my own salvation.
I paint myself. Reading in bed, bathing in tub or just a backside view of myself watching a tablet. I delineated the details as explicitly as possible with my use of pigments and brushes. Sometimes dedicated, sometimes empty-minded and other times vigilant – I would find different aspects of myself appear in the canvas. The person in the painting is me and not me. They are quiet, comfortable, and free, and their eyes are clear. When I saw this person, I felt happy, but I was also scared. I am afraid that the person in the painting is not like me, and I am also fearful that it is me. My culture has a taboo against women not wearing clothes, but when I stripped the figure’s clothes in the painting, I felt happier. What artistic creation means to me is a mirror of self- reflection with which I can find my true ego. An artist as well as a spectator, I have been switching myself back and forth to figure out what I desire, where my ego is and how to break the tether of reality.

Windows In, Windows Out

This work inflates the importance of somatics to combat the idea that we only exist in our minds. The brain is central to the nervous system but there are infinite nodes within our bodies and around us scientifically and spiritually.
Windows In, Windows Out is an immersive mixed media installation that maps sensory awareness. The mural series on the walls chronicles the introspective journey of a female allegory. A network of hyper-magnified sensory neurons takes her on this journey, firing with explosions of color within and outside of her figure.
The installation is specific to a studio where a large window defines the haptic experience of the space. Reflections of this window are reproduced on the wall with paint and off the wall with mylar. They ground the metaphysical, painted environment in its real, physical environment.
Visually integrating mind with body and body with space portrays how every seen and unseen faculty of existence is holistically connected.