My name is
Victoria Mackender.

I am a visual artist passionate about contemporary painting and expanded media. I studied at the University of Central Missouri as an undergraduate, where I earned my BFA degree in painting. I am currently obtaining my MFA at the University of Washington in Seattle. 

 

I am a contemporary figurative painter who employs the use of bold colors and dream-like imagery to explore complex themes of ambivalence, transformation, and the inner psyche. I paint my subconscious fixations–images, colors, and emotions frequently become the subjects of fascination that inspire my work. I treat painting as a conversation with my subconscious, collaborating with her to inform my decisions. This dialog between my subconscious and conscious self is dictated by my personal mythologies–my underlying doubtfulness of reality. Through painting, I uncover clarity and freedom.

 

My work pairs the use of oil paint with narrative imagery to visually explore these mythologies. The processes of my work present a duality between creation and narrative: storytelling reveals and facilitates the sharing of personal fears and convictions, while creating becomes a means to untangle tangible experiences and ambivalent emotions. My visual language articulates without directing, leaving the audience with an exposition to insert and explore their own mythologies. 

 

As I employ a lurid nocturnal palette and disrupted surrealist imagery, I create a space for uncertainty. My collection of work to date informs my creative processes and direction, helping me to decipher personal myths and distorted memories. These creative processes are feeling-based and intuitive, often beginning impulsively and  without premonition of a finished image. Instead, it begins with an urge to create a sense within of an unknown message waiting to reveal itself. My work continuously expresses the intimate details of my life, history, experiences, and traumas, becoming a mechanism to understand myself and the world around