Arabella Proffer, Akron Soul Train March Artist in Residence, Artist Talk

Arabella will host an artist talk on Thursday, March 21st at Crave. She will discuss her journey from studying to be a portrait painter, to when a cancer diagnosis changed her work dramatically with a focus on medical humanities, emerging sciences, and the practice and alchemy of intuitive oil painting. 

The talk is free, but space is limited. Please follow this link to register for your free ticket.

Thursday, March 21, 2019

6:00 pm

Crave, 57 East Market Street, Akron, OH 44308

My work changed drastically one day in 2010 when I found myself creating surreal organic environments. I decided I didn’t feel like painting people anymore. Although I started from a place of abstraction, they became filled with strange hybrids of flowers, cells, and symbols that appeared like organisms from another planet. It was only later that I found out I had cancer crawling through my body at an alarming rate. When my doctor showed me scans of the tumor, it looked almost identical to what I had been painting-a perfect oval with tentacles and all. I was told I had a rare 1% of all cancers and I was in serious trouble (after I was first told there was no way it was cancer and cells don’t reproduce as fast as mine had). My tumor felt like it was a part of me, it had its own set of nerves and feelings separate from the rest of my body. I wondered what those heads of the tentacle were up to, because they looked like they were on a mission. Tumor came quite fast so the timing was too coincidental that I began them right as this things was growing in my leg. A new fascination with the macro universe and micro universe was born