Lydia Gravis, b. 1981, is an emerging artist living and working in Ogden, Utah. She earned a BA in Painting and Drawing from Warren Wilson College and a MFA in interdisciplinary visual art from the Art Institute of Boston at Lesley University.

ARTIST STATEMENT
What unifies us? What perpetuates a sense of otherness? I’m inspired by experiences beyond our control that distill our egos and feel psychologically enigmatic, but leave us with a simultaneous sense of our own mortality and human connectedness. Making art is my way of making sense of it all, or rather, the result of my inability to make sense of any of it and my simple desire to respond. Mark making is an empathic activity for me, a way for me to connect to the world around me and the world within me. I create colonies of marks and lines and in my mind they become personified and assume individual behaviors. Can I re-write troubling human narratives with them? Can I make them cooperate? As I try to sort out reality, I create a new reality on paper. I eventually relinquish my initial intention of control and it is with this surrender that an unpredictable creative process unfolds. Ultimately driven by a desire for engagement, and sustained by the meditative act of making, I hope to pass on a sense of wonder and resonance to those who view my work.