Christina Constantine
New York, NY
“The joyful process of creating artwork has been a healing practice in anxious times, a surrender to peace in challenging times. Being immersed in the beauty of color is life-affirming and feels like the truth...As Dostoevsky writes ‘Beauty will save the world.’”
Christina Constantine (she/her/hers) is an artist who has worked with many media over 50 years as a form of meditation and fun. Exploring different materials, she has used makeup, oil and acrylic paint, watercolor, tempera, foil, berries, fabric, beads, sequins, ribbon, yarn, and most recently creating drawings with thread. When reflecting on her art process and career, she describes her transitions between media as linear being derived from integrating “a new technique or material” into her practice, exploring these concepts and potentially using the new techniques or materials as guiding principles for her next mode of expression.
Christina began her career surrounded by the arts culture of New York City where she admired the work of color theorist Robert Swain and the lyrical abstraction of Mark Rothko, Helen Frankenthaler, and Larry Poons. At that time she was creating color field paintings on unprimed canvas with what she describes as her “secret formula” for maintaining the vibrancy of pigment. She spent a significant amount of time exploring watercolor in a variety of forms from figurative, landscape, and abstract on surfaces large and small. Each of her chosen artistic techniques creates a way for her to experience a sense of creative flow, whether it is through pattern or allowing water to go where it will.
Since 2003, Christina has been fortunate to work as an artist in residence at The Living Museum in New York, an art studio dedicated to presenting the art produced by patients at the Creedmoor Psychiatric Center. Her interest in Byzantine mosaics has inspired her to create paintings with repetitive patterns presenting color in unique ways as she describes: “Although often the source template may be the same, I endeavor to imbue life and individuality into each successive image, demonstrating that there is a porthole to unique wonders within repetition.” She introduced yarn and thread to these paintings which lead the way to her current occupation with “thread drawings” and an interest in folk art. Her work has been shown in many international exhibitions and has found a home in as many private collections.
