Corbie Leiker
Bio
I am an artist currently residing in Kansas. I completed my Bachelor of Fine Arts in Painting and Drawing at Wichita State University. My work primarily consists of large scale charcoal drawings, however, more recently I have been collaborating and experimenting with various materials.
Artist Statement
Experiencing another human can be exhilarating, fascinating, confusing or arduous. Each individual comes with personality traits, biologically determined and individually shaped by the environment they have experienced. With these variables human interactions can spark a shared interest, a common background, or emotional significance shared between events. Despite these perceptions of connection, there are strong moments of disconnection between people you seem to know. We put our own value in people and relationships which we decide are special to us and provide us with something meaningful. These moments of connection, pure intimacy and vulnerability are what is most precious about human interactions.
With these efforts of connection between humans comes its binary opposition, disconnection. This dichotomy of interaction poses a problematic grey area of human interaction. With this opposition comes doubt; how can we ever truly know what another person is experiencing in relation to ourselves?
I examine this beautiful tragedy of ambiguity of supposed connections, significant feelings, intimacy and misread disconnections all experienced within human interactions. I translate romantic notions of preciousness in intimacy and relationships that we have thought to have experienced, imagined or have come to know. I physically pull and push the charcoal into and against the surface of paper forming an intimacy with the medium. This relationship I develop with the drawings nurtures the raw tenderness of the moments I interpret for the viewer to experience in the hazy confusion I see as human intimacy. The possibilities of scenarios we experience in reality and in my drawings are limitless; however, we do have the power to project, perhaps imagine, what someone means- or what the ending may be.