Exhibited in Art Among the Stars 2025
Sea of stars
2025
oil on canvas
8 x 10 inches
This painting is inspired by a night on the San Juan Islands when the stars reflected on the rippling ocean, merging sky and sea into a single, luminous surface. I was drawn to the way the night sky seemed to dance across the water, capturing a fleeting moment that felt both infinite and deeply personal. The memory of that experience held both wonder and a quiet vulnerability which became the foundation of this work.
In my practice, I explore how memory and vulnerability coexist, how certain moments become suspended in time. This piece is about that feeling of being small but connected, standing at the edge of the world and witnessing something vast and mysterious. The stars reflected on the ocean surface echo how memories can blur and distort, appearing clear one moment and fragmented the next.
Victoria Mackender
MFA Graduate Student, Drawing Faculty
My work exists at the intersection of vulnerability, grief, and memory. I am drawn to the ways trauma fragments identity, displacing parts of the self in time. Through painting and expanded media, I seek to revisit these frozen moments, unearthing what was lost to see it anew and to reclaim it.
In my practice, I explore how the body becomes interdimensional, caught between past and present, inhabiting multiple realities at once. This process is both personal and mythic. A spiritual excavation where gestures and repeated forms become a throughline, weaving together fractured narratives into something more cohesive and honest. My work does not veil grief or vulnerability rather, it embraces them as charged, affective forces.
