EFA STUDIO PROGRAM: Member Artists

Dena Sturm

Artist's Website
Instagram

My work addresses the world I longed to have lived in and the reality of the world I did. I paint places and portraits hoping to gain a greater understanding of myself by uncovering aspects of someone or somewhere else — even if imagined. The struggles inherent in creating help me discover parts of myself that I still don’t know but want to. The ability to transform my world has always been my strength. I use transparent layers of oil paint to create atmosphere — fusing the past with the present — each layer integral to the whole. The beauty in my work is a wish. I use paint as a tool to transcend sorrow and darkness; 
I use light and color to seek hope and consciousness. Depth in painting has always moved me by creating a feeling of inclusion. Longing to connect, my marks move through space and architecture revealing hints of another’s past and present. This allows me and the viewer to travel back and forth, through our own experience, hopefully arriving somewhere familiar and new. I also work in monotype and have found it to be extremely important to my practice. I did not submit images of my monotypes because I feel the different processes I use, such as embossing and printing over paintings on paper, do not photographs well at this point.