BIO

Kaleigh Quinnan is an artist currently based in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. She holds a Bachelors of Fine Art in Drawing & Painting as well as a Bachelors of Science in French and Francophone studies with a business concentration (2021).

Her current work explores representations of women in pop culture and the western art canon, blending motifs pulled from cult cinema, cartoons, fashion, advertising and influencer marketing. Dwelling on dramatized tropes of feminine bodies, she creates absurdist narratives with abstract forms as an avenue to criticize sexualized consumerism, class politics, and gendered aesthetics. Large-scale figurative paintings and colored pencil drawings are central to her current studio practice that has also included performance and digital design in the past.

Interested in creating narratives that walk the line between horror and humor, the artist invents images that question the disturbing sentience of living objects (Annabelle) as well as the friendlier dolls who have been made alive (Barbie). With each work she continues to develop the visual language that defines this intersection. Quinnan’s influences include Grace Weaver, Henri Matisse, Peter Saul, Hannah Epstein, Sassetta, Tracey Moffatt, Ilana Savdie and The Chicago Imagists. She also looks toward Dada and the Avant-Garde movements in Paris when asking what is an object and why. 

A central character that emerges in her paintings is a bimbo-esque depicture of a yellow-haired, pastel-colored figure who is often featured in uncomfortable, hyper-sexualized and unrealistic positions. Drawn from the artists own experiences or observances, these semi-autobiographical works cast physical limitations and traditional proportions aside as a protest against objectification. This work uses humor (made evident in the long, caption-like titles assigned to each piece) to acknowledge the irony of an art object rejecting objectification. The scale, sharp lines and bold color contrast invites viewers into the plot of each painting and prompts onlookers to digest the action taking place amid the swollen extremities and hedonic details of each figure.

Within her painting practice, the figure is often constrained to a single narrative to emphasize absurdity and imitate advertising media. In creating this parallel, this work explores the relationship between bodies and the roles assigned to them from observers based on learned visual cues. The drawings hope to provoke similar conversations and provide different perspectives on how bodies can exist in a confusing space. Monochrome colored pencil works feature intimate snapshots that expand the universe that my work imagines. The scenes in these drawings are more passive, reminiscent of what would be seen when scrolling through a social feed within an absurdist universe. 

Across mediums, the work materializes as a suite of bold figures that playfully reject their status as an object and embrace agency over their own distressing narrative by challenging different perspectives on what it means to be consumed.