Emotional Transitions

A highlight of some of the fascinating artwork by Christina Klein.

My work begins with the meditative process of playing with materials. Before I start a painting, I quilt together fabric, thinking about how the lines will interact with the composition, and if the shadows from the quilt will tell its own story. I am drawn to different textures in fabric, and how they react with paint. Finding materials with floral textures that can be mixed with textiles that have different geometric patterns helps create an embossed image on the painting surface. As I’m working on the composition itself, these textures and seams informs where I make marks and brings together different ideas.

All of my projects contain materials that I have collected. I have ripped up floorboards from a house before it was torn down to make canvas stretchers and sculptures. I’ve also collected wood from a jobsite that was bulldozed for construction, using a chainsaw to cut the logs into workable pieces, then using the table saw to cut them into thin boards. Even the act of collecting used cardboard for sculptures is a form of brainstorming for me. I think about my creations in terms of building a house, albeit my work is recreated in abstract, fragmented pieces. Light plays a strong role in the final installation process. Using light to create long shadows helps illustrate walking through a house in disrepair.

Each part of my art making process builds upon the overarching narrative of loss and change. The imagery is a blend of real structures, ideas I developed through sketches and a collage of models I have built. The paintings and the models have come together, forging their own narrative with each other, where one idea fuels the next. I build my sculptures to look like my paintings, which in turn become still-lives for new painting series. My work has a balance of controlled chaos. It is driven by domestic environments, whose sense of order has been pulled apart and left in abstracted fragments.