Lucinda Gold is a mixed media artist who works primarily with fine line drawings, recently incorporating embroidery into their practice. For as long as they can remember, they have created a special space for themself through the act of drawing and journaling: a corporeal dreamworld. They have always fixated on colors, textures, and juxtapositions via pen and paper, which they realized elicit a physical and emotional response in the viewer. In their often chaotic—and sometimes vulgar—drawings, they attempt to construct a world outside of our own, an intimate place where embracing emotions is a requirement, where toughness and tenderness cohabitate. They are inspired by bell hooks, Ad Hoc Dykes Love Explosion, Alison Bechdel, Kiki Smith, David Wojnarowicz, Kezia Harrell, and their friends, whose boundless creativity is unparalleled.
My mixed media drawings explore the ways bodies are defined and classified through culturally imposed narratives. They reflect an urgent need I feel to explore the uncomfortable process of embodiment–becoming myself in a world of forced binaries. I'm interested in the ways our bodies exist in liminal states of being. My work strives to reflect the strength of fluidity through juxtaposition of toughness and tenderness. Embodying our multiplicities is clumsy, messy, and beautiful.
These images, on canvas, paper, and clay boards are informed by journal entries and sketches tracing dreams during bouts of insomnia. In this world I create, people contemplate what it might feel like to take up loving residency in our skin, living beyond the objects that represent us. My characters explore the power of disguise, finding confidence in ambiguity, thriving in a setting of seemingly contradictory identities. Each image captures the haphazardness of change. These pieces show lives as we live them in isolation— applying mascara, changing a menstrual cup, using a vibrator, looking at ourselves in a computer camcorder-- yet they also capture a collective air of resistance against notions of “normality” and “beauty”.
View Chopped Liver in its entirety here
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Visit Irwin 2021: Fabricating Solace exhibition in the 3D virtual gallery.
The 2021 Irwin Scholars are Abby McPhillips, Caroline Alfonso, Cassidy Skillman, Chloe Calhoun, Connor Alexander, Kalen Meeks, Klytie Xu, Louisa Balderas, Lucinda Gold, Saul Villegas, Sydney Geisinger, and Zoe Forsyth.