(Silent Auction Bidding Closes at 8:30 pm, August 7)

This 30" x 40" acrylic on linen artwork, 'Formation: Repose, Stillness,' is the perfect addition to any home.

Formation: From the Ground Up:

Landscape abstraction continues to be the primary focus of my artwork. My recent series, Formation, recalls the familiar geological landscape where I live in the central United States. Arkansas is known for its landscape and natural beauty. To me, abstract painting allows me to visually dissect the landscape and provides an opportunity to communicate through sensory experiences. As my paintings take form, my relationship with the earth continues to evolve over time.

Northwest Arkansas is part of an expansive geological site referred to as the U. S. interior Highlands, situated between the eastern Appalachians and the westem Rocky Mountains. Building railroads and highways across the United States required blasting through rock formations, exposing geological cross sections and creating greater access to rural areas once inhabited primarily by natives and my kinfolk. The Formation Series is intended to pay homage to the geological landscape. Referencing a tonal color palette, I weave paint into layers, subtly shifting back and forth between surface and depth.

It is a mapping process with neutral pigments as I spread paint across the surface directionally, to the north, south, east and west. I look beyond obvious beauty toward feeling a connection to the landscape for its powerful energy developing over billions of years and hosting countless life forms. I am reminded that what lies beneath supports what lives above. From the water's edge, trickling streams and creeks lined with rocks and boulders, quenching the thirst of flora and fauna, including ferns and fungi, as well as native hardwoods: the sugar maple, shag bark hickory and black walnut trees. I consider the idea that the human body and experience replicates the landscape topography's peaks and valleys. I am also reminded that my body is a fragment within this landscape, existing for a delicate whisper in time. And to the contrary: ""From my rotting body, flowers shall grow and I am in them and that is eternity.""
--Edvard Munch

ABOUT LADAWNA WHITESIDE
Born in rural Oklahoma, LaDawna Whiteside's American lineage stretches back to the American Dust Bowl of the 1930s. She is the descendant of a farmer, an orphaned miner's daughter, a charismatic preacher and a female factory worker. Whiteside sifts through 19th century American social history and uses materials, process and place to form a visual dialogue. Whiteside earned her BA at the University of Arkansas in Little Rock in 2000 and her MFA at the Art Institute of Boston in 2010. She also attended the School of Visual Arts in New York, where she studied criticism and writing in 2011. She has completed residencies around the world, most recently in Israel (2019), Mexico (2018), and India (2018). In 2017, she won the Contemporaries Award at the 59th Annual Delta Exhibition for 'Body: Flesh and Bone, graphite on paper'. For most of her life, Whiteside has lived in Arkansas, and she currently lives and works at her studio and farm in Fayetteville. With a watchful eye, she is engaged and aware within the struggle, contemplating how to build cultural bridges through social and landscape integration.

Buyer to pick up at Arkansas Children's Foundation in Springdale during pickup hours, or pay shipping.