Gilda Hall

My practice is rooted in my desire to create work that captures highly charged emotional moments. I am interested in the melancholy acceptance of living in a transient world, balanced by the exquisite beauty of life that exists between our bleakest moments. My self portraits are informed by my vulnerable experience as an empathic and highly sensitive person, both gifted and cursed by the reality of picking up the feelings of those around me while trying to navigate my own. My work shows figures that are experiencing both loss and intimacy, as they move through our world and come in contact with impermanence and its connection to the soul.

Though my work is ultimately a process of healing and letting go, my subjects are not shy of the overshadowing emotions that come with grief and trauma. For this reason, my subjects and settings are often caught somewhere between the human and the spiritual world, a softer space, where I am able to gaze deep within myself to process the pain and pleasure of my humanity. Spirituality has become embedded in how I define my identity as an artist, allowing me to create art that is, in its own right, a ritual act. This way of combining painting and ritual helps me to cope with and define the world around me.