Lialia Kuchma

Lialia Kuchma’s Artist Statement

Matisse remains one whose works have stimulated, inspired, and just comforted my senses and while his work is so reflective of the Fauvism period in terms of color and distinctive style, I was intrigued into abstracting one of his paintings by reducing the color palette into black & white.  Much of my work is a result of just looking and in the process, whether looking at art or nature or the geometry of the city, I would find the question of how would this translate into a tapestry.  Since I also photograph I have a strong preference for b/w imagery and this particular tapestry evolved during a period of doing photographic work.  Therefore looking at a photographic portrait I did of Otar, I wanted to apply a very simple weaving process and alter this portrait but still retain its photographic aspects of it.  This in turn led to a collaborative project of almost 2 years.

“Wing left” started as a simple line drawing after I had seen an exhibit on planes, however for me the beauty was in the markings within the wing, but I did want to “frame” them within a free form shape.  I decided to leave the warp ends visible around the edges as a skeletal addition and to soften the hard edging of the shape.

Lialia Kuchma’s Biography

Born in Ukraine, and raised in Chicago, IL.  After so many years of weaving tapestries, my commitment to tapestry remains solid especially since it seems that I have wandered through so many different medium before I  was introduced to weaving.  While I formally studied printmaking, calligraphy, stencil and gold leaf application, sculpture, and photography, Ukrainian craft art forms, tapestry, a self-taught exploration, remains the main form of creative expression.