Journie Cirdain

Journie Cirdain on a practice that embodies a rebellion against efficiency, the brutal history of fences, boundaries and other forms of containment, & memories of a forever modified land.

How did you get into making art?

Who doesn’t get started as a kid? I really got into my groove drawing horses, mermaids and self portraits as a princess with lots of handbags. I was socially celebrated in third grade for drawing a particularly good foot with a crayon and that taste of victory was my doom. I haven’t stopped drawing since.

What are you currently working on?

There is a brutal history of fences, boundaries and other forms of containment in the US for humans and non-human nature. This system is based on an understanding in which the land is a soul-less object which can and should be owned, subjugated and worked for profit. I am currently working on a series of drawings centered around instances in which plants and animals undermine such attempts at human control.

More particularly I am working on one such drawing for a group show with DeGroot Fine Art that will open in September in Chicago.

I am currently working on a series of drawings centered around instances in which plants and animals undermine such attempts at human control.

Journie Cirdain

What inspired you to get started on this body of work?

I think anyone who grew up running wild in nature (for me the oceans, mountains and rivers of the West Coast USA), must carry within their souls an aching love of nature forever. I am also acutely aware that even these idealized visions of nature are really memories of a forever modified land. We live in places in which entire species have been wiped out, natural landscape scraped away, and our five senses cleansed of non-human noises, smells, sensations and sights. Our future holds an even more simplified and modified natural world if we continue along the same lines. I am making art that sits within a system in which the wilderness has value in itself, in which non-human things hold agency, and in which forces operate outside of human comprehension. I attempt to treat non-human beings as worthy of artistic attention in themselves, not for information, or for decoration, but as protagonists in their own right. I also draw a parallel (pun intended) between our treatment of nature and our cultural treatment of women.

Do you work on distinct projects or do you take a broader approach to your practice?

I think of my work as all-connected. Instead of creating a rational or linear argument, in which each idea sits on top of the next, I think of my drawings as contributing simultaneously, contradictorly and overlappingly to a worldview.

Drawing with graphite pencils is not quick or powerfully execited; it is a slow scratching that mirrors the patient labor of building a web or sewing lace. I think about it as a rebellion against efficiency, certainty and heirarchical power.

What’s a typical day like in your studio?

I arrive feeling stoked to have a studio in NYC, set down my backpack, take off my shoes, put on my favorite audiobook (currently books by Edith Wharton, Dan Flores or the Classic Horror Stories Podcast) and get drawing.