Paintings by Stephanie C Cosby

b. 1975, Vitória, Brasil

Lives and works in Corvallis, Oregon, usa

I like to think my first visual and spiritual language came from the iron dust that rode in on light beams and salty ocean air coating my first home in Brasil. I saw, smelled, felt, and tasted its bright, rusty particles as I crawled around exlporing.

The iron from the “iron quadrangle” in Minas Gerais is mined - extracted from the land without permission. This specific type of iron ore is called Itabirite: red ochre formed alongside hematite, magnetite, and quartz. I like to think that my ancestors reached me through that energetically rich iron dust and provided an initiation into the dreamworld where I receive inspiration for paintings, and sometimes see the future. A world I can rely on for my own healing. My painting practice is a composting practice transforming grief which is a part of my liberation work.

The forms I paint come from this dream﹌portal﹌place. They came to me in a dream, and I think of them as a language I can use to paint without the confines of hetero-normative identity, ethnicity, class, or historical context. These are forms that liberate me from all of those constraints, forms that hold space for wound healing (physical/psychic/energetic). This work centers around the human body as land and water, and their liberation from colonizing forces. My paintings are also about caregiving because caregiving is an integral force in this liberation.