Lauren Crazybull
Home: Vancouver, British Columbia
Title: Sydney with flowers
Media: Oil on canvas
Dimensions: 122 x 92 cm
Website: laurencrazybull.com
Instagram: @elceebee
ARTIST STATEMENT
This portrait depicts Sydney Frances Pascal, an artist from Líl̓wat nation who I met in Vancouver, BC on the lands of the unceded territories of the xʷməθkʷəy̓əm, Sḵwx̱wú7mesh Úxwumixw, and səlilwətaɬ peoples where we both live.
My main motivation behind painting fellow Indigenous people is to translate their presence in an honest way that speaks to their energy. Using oil paint and a larger than life scale, I wanted to highlight the quiet and commanding power of Sydney at this moment in time.
My portraiture practice has been a way to combat the idea of terra nullius, or “nobody’s land” and show the presence of Indigenous people. The way Indigenous people have long been relegated to the past visually is another form of this. I do my best to frustrate ideas of what Indigenous people should look like by showing the everyday and relishing in the ordinariness of being. When Indigenous people have long been dispossessed of our own land and ways, this practice is a small way to demonstrate our ongoing presence and multiplicities.
I have recently been interested in painters in art history who broke off from purely religious themes and integrated their own styles into the work. This painting is a nod to this risk those painters took. Light peeks in from thick trees imitating a halo effect and Sydney sits in an almost prayer-like pose. I gifted Sydney flowers – a practice I recently began with sitters, and I feel this is a part of me in the portrait. The lifespan of flowers is fleeting and I like thinking of all the flowers within art history that get to live on through paintings, it reminds me that we are infinite.
There is beauty in the ordinary, there is honesty in the everyday and there is power in presence.
ARTIST BIOGRAPHY
Lauren Crazybull is a Niitsítapi (Member of Kainai First Nation), Dené artist currently living in Vancouver, BC. In her work, Lauren considers Indigenous presence and multiplicity through paintings, creating worlds where honest portrayals trespass onto romantic representations of Indigeneity. Working primarily in portraiture, a long-standing genre that is often embedded with an imbalance of power between the artist/viewer and sitter, Crazybull seeks to examine the relationship between herself as an artist and the individuals she paints. Through this ongoing work, Lauren uses her practice as a way to assert her own humanity, and advocate, in diverse and subtle ways, for the innate intellectual, spiritual, creative and political fortitude of Indigenous peoples.