13 Riisa Gundesen

Title: Tomato Study

Dimensions: 9in x 12in

Year of Completion: 2019

Medium: Watercolour and Gouache on Toned Paper

Estimated Value: $280

Courtesy of the Artist

Tomato Study deals with Gundesen’s interest in abject objects found within her own home. Through these grotesque, sometimes abstract still lifes, she explores her relationship to such topics as food, homemaking and beauty régimes, particularly as they relate to her experience with anxiety and depression. Gundesen is interested in engendering an empathic confrontation in the viewer. The abject promotes a bodily reaction, a tightening of the gorge, a sudden jarring in the gut; in looking, the viewer is made to feel their own body. She is interested in the tension between the seductive beauty of the paint and the repulsive horror of the rot, the mold, recalling the tension between attraction and repulsion, a sickly curiosity mixed inextricably with disgust. Like an intrusive thought, or the panic attack that you’ve pushed back all week, it lives in the margins, a source of threat and intrigue.

Riisa Gundesen is an emerging artist specialising in portraiture and figurative painting. Her practice deals with contemporary self-portraiture, exploring topics such as personal narrative, the abject, and mental illness. Her work has been shown in numerous galleries and artist-run-centres across Canada, and featured in such publications as Galleries West and The Capilano Review. Gundesen received her BFA from the University of Lethbridge in 2012, and her MFA from the University of Saskatchewan in 2017. She currently teaches painting and drawing at the University of Alberta.