Artist Statement
I reflect on the role of artworks as contributors to conversations about memory and the natural environment, sentimentality, nostalgia and solace, and specifically, how art can extend dialogue beyond the self. I am nostalgic for the days I spent running barefoot with my brother and our neighborhood friends through the quarter-acre of lush Kentucky Bluegrass that makes up the yard at my childhood home. I long for the days spent biking and rollerblading down the street to the neighborhood park, and for hours collecting acorns and pinecones, searching for wildflowers with a guidebook in hand, and identifying birds that sing into the crisp morning breeze of spring in Akron, Ohio.
I reflect on the role of artworks as contributors to conversations about memory and the natural environment, sentimentality, nostalgia and solace, and specifically, how art can extend dialogue beyond the self. I am nostalgic for the days I spent running barefoot with my brother and our neighborhood friends through the quarter-acre of lush Kentucky Bluegrass that makes up the yard at my childhood home. I long for the days spent biking and rollerblading down the street to the neighborhood park, and for hours collecting acorns and pinecones, searching for wildflowers with a guidebook in hand, and identifying birds that sing into the crisp morning breeze of spring in Akron, Ohio.
This work is a hybrid of both painting and drawing composed of liquid charcoal. The composite process serves to move the composition in and out of representation and abstraction while the grayscale suggests a sense of place and familiarity that has withstood the grip of the digital age. These paintings are a way to bring forward what grounds me, what slows down the constant pace of everyday life, and the memories I could live in forever. I hope for viewers to reconnect with their places of nostalgia within the natural environment as a form of solace.
BIO
Grace Worley is a painter from Akron, Ohio. She graduated from Wittenberg University in 2020 with a BA in art education and earned her MFA in painting + drawing at Ohio University in 2023.
Grace Worley is a painter from Akron, Ohio. She graduated from Wittenberg University in 2020 with a BA in art education and earned her MFA in painting + drawing at Ohio University in 2023.
Worley’s work has been exhibited throughout Ohio and across the United States. Since 2021, her work has been featured at the Swope Art Museum, Riffe Gallery, Medici Museum, Manifest Gallery, and the Springfield Museum of Art. Worley was awarded the People’s Choice Award in 2020 by The Contemporary Dayton Gallery and was a nominee for the Dedalus Foundation MFA Fellowship in 2022. She has been featured in several interviews including Hyperallergic, Mineral House Media, and Canvas Rebel, as well as published in numerous publications such as Arts to Hearts Studio Visit Book (Vol. 1), Suboart Magazine (August 2023), and the Nitram Charcoal Inc. blog.