artwork > about

CHRISTINA PETTERSSON explores resurrection and savage demise on a grand scale once reserved for history painting. Her drawings, sculptures and performances reference classic mythology and literature, revealing a deep allegiance to the wilderness of a bygone era, the sorcery of the night, and the experience of a world in decline. It is a stage materialized from the often brutal but beautiful Everglades of her hometown, which she has spent a lifetime exploring.

She writes, “As my roots in the South have grown so has the landscape. Where I am and what my unique terrain means matters more and more. It is not a backdrop. A voracious reader of local history, as well as an avid naturalist, birder, explorer and wild thing, I am most alive when I am inside the scenery, tramping the landscape barefoot and muddy. My artwork is the result of my experience of living in the Deep South, a place I genuinely love and feel connected to, yet often mourn for. What materializes is not so much a straightforward viewpoint as a shadow world, draped in the ignoble past and the questionable future. I long to restore that epic and mythological dimension, a sense of awe and reverence for the world. The fact is they are not much about my personality. I want to be a storyteller. I want to believe that life is still wild."

photo credit: Eli Peck