FLUX 2021 - Dana Ferguson

Email: danaaferguson@gmail.com
Instagram: coffee.fuelled.creations

Dana Ferguson is a mixed media artist who explores themes of identity, memory, consciousness, and gratitude. Currently working with digital painting and combining it with unconventional materials to display her conceptual themes, she hopes viewers can find a piece of themselves in her work. With a major in Fine Arts and a Minor in English, Dana hopes to understand how individuals think and express themselves, and how that affects who they are. She is inspired by incredible professors at Waterloo, the beautiful and painful moments in her own life, music, and the art community. Dana seeks to physically represent her most abstract thoughts by attempting to always push the limits of the state of mind.

Artist Statement

After a year of isolation, we have been alone with our thoughts for what feels like an eternity. The flow of constant thoughts and feelings is one of the most beautiful, but also one of the most exhausting aspects of being alive. The things that we can feel, that allow us to find depths of darkness and sunbeams of happiness within our own head, shape who we are as people. Consciousness is, in a way, both a prison and an opportunity.

As humans, we give parts of our consciousness away to others when we love them and we let them in, and because we are social beings, we start to influence each other's behaviours. The fact that everyone is an accumulation of everyone they know, who are in turn made up of tiny pieces of the people they know and so on, allows me to understand how complex our personalities are. The fact that there are millions of directions your life could go in at any time makes me start to believe in what I call the opposite of fate. Nothing is meant to happen but so many beautiful things do happen due to coincidence. From those realizations, to the things you feel with your entire soul like love, regret, gratitude and heartbreak, I wanted to capture what it's like to be searching for what lies in the corners of your consciousness.

In my deepest thoughts, what's there? Do we as humans have an edge to the labyrinth that is our brains? How do intertwined lives and consciousnesses affect each other, and who would you be as a person if you would have followed a different path?

These are questions I have but don't necessarily want the answers to. I think these wonders are the closest thing we feel to magic, and I have had a wonderful time exploring them.

Interview

How have your lived experiences informed your artistic practice? 

Over the course of my life I have had A LOT of feelings, and it is known that I am either at a very high high, or an extremely low low. This ends up being extremely painful for me, but also rewarding at times. Through my struggles with mental health, heartbreak, passion, and everything else in life that allows me to have this contrast, I seek to express both ends of these feelings. There has been a lot of times in my life where I couldn’t put what I was thinking or feeling into words, but I could put it into a drawing. My life has been complicated, but that is the beauty of it, and that’s what I hope to express in my practice. 

Who are your greatest influences? What effect do they have on your thesis work?

Okay embarrassing secret time, for my entire life I have been obsessed with Taylor Swift, so her music has been altering my life for quite some time. Although her latest album evermore, is simply the result of and is about people being alone with their thoughts. I started to become extremely interested in the density of thoughts around this time (also because of quarantine). Another thing I was doing at the time was watching Schitts Creek, I found it so beautiful and was really interested in the facets involved when someone creates something. So much happened in that show that made me say “Wow that came from someone’s head... Dan Levy wrote that, and executed it perfectly” which inspired me to really push the boundaries of my own creativity. 

In terms of painters, I have always loved how Picasso was able to express emotions without directly stating what he was trying to say. 

What does your work aim to say? 

My work aims to say “you are not alone”. I want viewers to find comfort in my work, and hopefully it may help them understand some things that they are going through. While not directly saying these things, I want people to interpret how beautiful life is, and know that what they have been through is tough, and notable of celebration that we got this far, and know that we have some amazing pieces of life ahead of us. I want my pieces to encourage strength and resilience. 

What is your usual artmaking process like? What are your preferred mediums?

Depends on the project. Right now I am trying to explore how deep our consciousness runs, I am so interested in the way the mind works, and what lives in your subconscious thoughts - so yes, long story short, for this piece, I allow some help from my dear friend, marijuana. Which, all jokes aside, I do see an important experimental aspect of this body of work.

What made you want to pursue art?

My favourite part about creating is when I solve a problem I didn’t even know existed. This is how I have found myself making contemporary art, because I love the journey to the piece, and how it evolves from your initial thoughts. I think I have always had a mind that people didn’t really understand, my whole life people have been telling me that I have some pretty strange thoughts. So art is a place for me to put those thoughts.