Christina Ekstrand’s artistry is rooted in a process-based practice in which the thematic concerns emerge from existential explorations. The artist delves into painting as a state of condensed memories, events, and modes of being — a form of excavation of both the inner and outer realms. Like links in an inherent chain, one image gives rise to the next. The process is intuitive; the practice often begins directly with the hands, establishing a framework, a foundational structure. At a later stage, various tools are employed to work and displace the paint. It is a search through shifting emotional registers in order to grasp painting’s meaning-bearing physical expression — the corporeality of color and the force contained within the impulses of the subconscious as they transform into image, statement, and language.