(American, b. 1986)
Biography:
Ciara Rafferty was born in San Diego, California in 1986. She received her BFA in Visual Arts and Art History from the University of San Diego in 2008 and her MFA from the New York Academy of Art in 2016. Ciara has attended residencies at the Terra Foundation for American Art in Giverny, France and the Altos de Chavón School of Design in La Romana, Dominican Republic. Recent exhibitions have included WATER|BODIES, Southampton Arts Center, New York, Bombay Sapphire Gin’s: 10 Years, 10 Cocktails Retrospective Gallery, Agora Gallery, New York, Art Miami New York Pier 94, New York and Take Home A Nude at Sotheby’s, New York. She currently lives and works in Brooklyn, NY.
Artist Statement:
My paintings of public architectural spaces explore the psychology of perception, elevating a deceptively innocuous subject matter into something worthy of more thoughtful consideration.
I am fascinated with public spaces of the past that were designed to evoke a hopeful future and intrigued by the buildings and intentions of the architects who made them, particularly of the hotels and motels of the 1950’s/60’s eras in Palm Springs, Hollywood and Miami.
Created in the past with the future in mind, they are now stuck in time. A shadow of the picture-postcard fun filled heydays that they once were, they evoke a desire to immerse oneself in the pleasure that they were created to give; or feelings of nostalgia and melancholy for that time now passed.