Claire Gilliam

Conversation I

2021

About the Series: Gilliam began the series Life Lines in 2017 after recently coming into possession of MRI scans of her brain. The scans, which she spent hours pouring over, both fas...

About the Series: Gilliam began the series Life Lines in 2017 after recently coming into possession of MRI scans of her brain. The scans, which she spent hours pouring over, both fascinated and horrified her. Gilliam always knew the seriousness of the brain injury suffered as a baby; however, it was the first time she confronted the visual evidence of the injury. Around the same time, she experienced a continuous period of profound familial loss. Both these episodes left her thinking about the body in a new light. This led her to study the biology and physiology of our bodies and the seemingly cruel, capricious way the body can behave, vacillating between strength and fragility. Gilliam began to make drawings from the MRIs recording the brain to understand how its structure and pathways form to activate the circumstances of the individual being we become. As the series has developed, the imagery has dissolved into abstraction, capturing something more existential. The repetitive lines revealed rhythms, and the patterns formed conversations. Ultimately, Life Lines has evolved into a visual story about connections, threading together a human body with its physical, metaphysical, and interpersonal environment. About the Artist: Claire Gilliam is an English photographer, printmaker, painter now based from her home and studio in Warwick, NY. In 1997, she graduated from Sheffield Hallam University in the UK with a BA(Hons) in Fine Art and completed the Professional Certificate in Photography at Rockport College, Maine in 2000. She has studied with photographers such as Arno Minkkinen and John Goodman and master gelatin silver printer, Chuck Kelton and master printmaker, Vijay Kumar. She is an assistant for author and fine art photographer Barbara Mensch. Her works have been shown across Europe and the USA and held in several private and public collections, including The ICP Library Print...

The materials are acrylic paint, and simple marking implements of graphite and Art Graf. Art Graf is a water-soluble media that comes in tailor’s squares, easily fitting into the han...

Encaustic on panel. It's simple; I create art because it makes me happy. I try not to overthink the process of what I’m painting and let my intuition be my guide. I love laying do...