Bio

Kristen C. Ridley graduated in December 2008 from the Roski School of Fine Arts at the University of Southern California. She is a conceptual artist skilled in rendering light, color, and the human figure. She also has a minor in 3D animation and hopes to pursue a career in the gaming industry while simultaneously developing her fine arts portfolio. She usually has very colorful hair, which delights women and children alike.

Technical Skills

• Maya
• 3D Studio Max
• Photoshop
• Illustrator
• HTML/CSS
• PHP

Artist's Statement

My work uses painting and drawing to address issues of gender and sexuality, primarily through portraiture.

The straightforward portraits confront the viewer nonaggressively and raise questions about the viewer’s own preconceived notions and biases regarding the gender binary and stereotypes. I am by turns amused and irritated by the ways in which people misunderstand gender nonconformity and view lesbians in general as one-note stereotypes. My work essentially serves to educate, to broaden people's minds, and to contribute to the creation and proliferation of authentic images that reflect my identity in a world where I feel like who I am is often overwritten by misinformation and ignorance. I also work to redefine and broaden what we consider conventionally attractive - in all sexes, but women in particular.

Most contemporary artists that deal with similar subject matter do so through photography. I use traditional media such as oil paint and charcoal both because they are beautiful and because these mediums grab the viewer’s attention and, through the expressive quality of the mark, underscore the subject matter’s importance in ways that a photograph can’t. Where a photograph speaks more to the authenticity of the subject, traditional mediums speak more to its importance. The process of meticulously rendering the subject by hand implicitly states that the subject is worthy of such great time and scrutiny. At the same time, the realism of the portraits still speaks to their authenticity.

The beauty of the works serve to humanize the subjects and create a positive context in which the subject matter is approached. The subjects are rendered larger than life and often in bold colors such that they demand to be addressed. They disallow themselves to be seen as merely decorative objects at the same time that they disallow the viewer to remain oblivious to the ways in which gender is more fluid than they previously thought.

Résumé

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