Cinamon Airhart

mixed media art

about

Cinamon Dorr Airhart grew up in Alabama with a family who spent their lives making things - growing food, building homes, sewing textiles, painting canvases, and machining submarine parts, to name a few. As a child, she was exposed to the creative process in a multitude of forms, but perhaps it was her grandmother who planted the deepest seed and love for art making at an early age. Airhart received a B.A. in Art from Auburn University and spent a decade working in art galleries before pursuing her own work full-time. She has lived all over the South but now resides in East Tennessee with her husband and two children. Her mixed media work is represented in numerous collections and has been described as ethereal or dreamlike, blurring lines between photography, drawing and painting.

There’s a sense of something greater than us wherever we’re willing to look for it—I love the process of pulling that out. Taking a photograph is just the beginning. What follows is a journey to something not so apparent from the surface. As a mixed media artist, I’m working with a lot of tools, but that feeling of transcendence is what steers the ship. If I can construct a scene that portrays even a fraction of the elation I’m feeling as I dream it up, if I can somehow pass that along to the viewer, then I’m very grateful for the opportunity to do that, even if just once in a while.

Biography

As a child, Cinamon Dorr Airhart was exposed to the creative process in many forms, but it was oil painting in her grandmother’s “art house” that cultivated her love for the studio at an early age. Airhart received a B.A. in Art from Auburn University. She has lived all over the South but now resides in her hometown of Oneonta, Alabama with her family. She and her husband own The Makers Downtown studios & gallery, where they teach and host a variety of art classes and creative workshops.

Airhart’s mixed media work is represented in numerous collections and has been described as ethereal or dreamlike. Her creative process involves traditional and alternative art processes, incorporating both painting and drawing as well as image transfer, the latter of which she has performed multiple demonstrations and taught in workshops.

Process / Statement

My original photographs are printed on film with archival pigment inks. The inks are transferred by hand onto the panel before layers of acrylic, pastels, oil, wax and other media are applied. The grid is the result of multiple transfers to a single substrate. It provides a surface disruption, sometimes furthered by crazing in the medium and incongruous areas created during pigment transfer.

Taking a photograph is just the starting point. Through editing and the unpredictable pigment transfer process to the creative response that follows, I aim to construct scenes that exist not in reality, but in dreams, memory or imagination. Using mixed media, I’m working with a lot of tools, but the feeling of transcendence is what steers the ship. If I can construct a scene that portrays the elation I’m feeling as I dream it up, if I can somehow pass even a fraction of that along to the viewer, then I’m very grateful for that opportunity.