Paula Lycan
Bio: Paula Lycan is an artist using photography and traditional darkroom practices to create portraits of intimate relationships, tracing a broader view of partnership, family, memory, and tenderness. Paula was born in 1992 in Pensacola, FL, and grew up in San Diego, CA. She received her BA from UC Santa Cruz and her MFA in Photography at Columbia University, 2020. Paula has shown at International Print Center New York and has work in the collections at the Mead Arts Museum. She currently lives and works in NYC.
Thesis Exhibition
Artist Statement: I play with your ears aimlessly because they are slightly oversized and have a subtle flop. They are the most vulnerable bits on your head. My fingernails leave their marks, traces to find my way back.
I collect images that are both documents and celebrations of these small moments of tenderness. These small victories in feeling free are the things that make us feel whole. I photograph people that I'm close to in moments of stillness. I document the feelings that drive us: love, longing, desire, nostalgia, or a mixture of something in between. When the world feels spun into a state of entropy, this work offers some semblance of order. Bodies exist in transitional states while landscapes blur edges of form. Time and identity are suspended in an attempt to restructure. Hierarchies and society temporarily dissolve to create space for future existences that are more fluid and malleable. In making photographs, I always seek to have the viewer feel rather than think about what they're seeing.
L to R: 1/16th #1 (8" x 10", Gelatin silver print, 2019); 1/16th #2 (8" x 10", Gelatin silver print, 2019); Jordan and Andie (16" x 20", Gelatin silver print, 2019); Prickle (20" x 24", Gelatin silver print, 2020); Lights Out (16" x 20", Gelatin Silver Print, 2019); Tulips (12" x 10", Archival Pigment Print, 2020); Spring (16" x 20", Gelatin Silver Print, 2019); You Make Blue Warm (20" x 30", Archival pigment print, 2019); Bathroom in Tungsten (16" x 20", Archival pigment print, 2020)
