Bio

Skye Alexandra Skagfeld is a self-taught, interdisciplinary artist living and working on Vancouver Island in British Columbia. Her practice is rooted in sustainability. She holds a Master's degree in Sustainable Leisure Management.

STATEMENT

“I make art out of necessity. Painting is how I express what I cannot easily say aloud. I give form to what is unseen: emotion, memory, atmosphere, and the shifting climate of lived experience. I am less interested in technical polish than in prolific, honest and passionate production. Living in a rural landscape, I draw on its textures, layers, and cycles. Creating is also spiritual for me, both a form of care and a duty.

My process is physical. I primarily work with watercolour and acrylic paint. I build up surfaces with found and repurposed materials and objects, working with my hands and my whole body. Drawing on my passion for sport, I use techniques such as punching, then pouring, so that energy and movement are held in the material itself. Influenced by painters Helen Frankenthaler Mary Weatherford, colour and space lead my work.

Working with the intensity of an athlete and the curiosity of a child, I align my practice with the seasons, presenting new work at each Solstice and Equinox. I think in series and in whole rooms. Curating is an extension of painting as individual pieces come together as a single body; I create places where viewers can slow down, quiet the mind, and feel something. Viewers often tell me they recognize a place, a person, or a moment in my paintings. I take this as the point of the work: an interpretation offered openly, which each person completes in their own way.”