VISCERAL (2017 - 2021)

The sacred and respected life of the animal is celebrated and reborn in my images. I speak of relationships, humor, fear, aloneness, defense, sacrifice and heartache, all of which mirror the human condition.  I sense my way with an inner eye, exploring the forms to expose the universal mystery through metaphor and image.  Touching on the divine, stories invite a vision, giving form even to the invisible, clothing the metaphors and throwing color into the shadows. I reveal the stories which communicate what is generally visible but often inexpressible. Objects such as flesh and bone assume cultural, spiritual significance which reflect values and beliefs. As I unearth the mystery, I represent the story with the mark, the color and the composition. It is then, when I merge with the painting, that I understand what I am about.

My painting process is direct, emotional, and one of intense investigation. I place marks aggressively onto the canvas and react to them. Mystery is essential in my work however the painted result is factual.  It may be an uncomfortable, even brutal, confrontation. While I am in the act of painting, it is actually impossible not to be painting myself. The painting comes through me. The work becomes a self portrait, then, as I paint from my own private feelings.

Visceral is not about a dear on a hook.

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A Solo Exhibition of this work premiered at The Dahl Arts Center in Rapid City, SD
September 3rd, 2021 - November 27, 2021

For more information please visit www.thedahl.org. Installation and studio photos below.

“Luckhart brings an authenticity to her subject, intimate knowledge of the butchering of animals as a farmer’s daughter and participant in the hunt. She sees beyond the sterile, plastic-wrapped offerings in the freezer aisle to the raw relationship of life and death. She’s intimate with the carnality of the body, its reduction to meat on a surgeon’s table as in a hunter’s shack, and she knows the inevitable end-game. She knows, as well, I think, the pull of faith in a God who has experienced what it means to be flesh… Luckhart—like her artistic forefathers—is fiercer than that. She is not gun shy. She faces facts head on and follows the mark. In VISCERAL, the mark led, and it led to a profound confrontation with embodiment, incarnation—with meat. And it’s hard to overstate just how good, and how powerful, these paintings are.”
-Elizabeth Bryant

Download the full ESSAY HERE

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