Featured Artist Aunia Kahn

Painter Aunia Kahn presents a stunning portfolio of figurative works painted in a colorful, folkloric style. Learn more about the artist by visiting her website.

 

 

My art finally feels like home. For 20 years, life-threatening allergies to most mediums kept me working digitally, a medium I was grateful for but never loved. When a diagnosis and medication allowed me to paint again, I realized I had lost the joy that made art my salvation in the first place.

 

 

For a few years, I moved between carrying my digital style into traditional work and experimenting. But sharing experimental work cost me followers, collectors, and gallery support. Disenchanted, I let it all wash away: the voice, the characters, the style. Underneath, I found the voice I had always carried.

 

 

In that shift, I asked myself what I truly loved in life and in art. My home, my closet, even the art I collected were filled with bold color, pattern, and layered story, yet my own work was mostly muted portraiture. It didn’t match the rest of my life or what inspired me daily.

 

 

I also began thinking about my roots. I had rejected my family history because of an extremely challenging upbringing, but like genes, it is part of me either way. Even when roots feel rotten, I learned I could take the good, even if it’s only two percent, and plant my own seed. That small percentage can grow an entirely beautiful life, with new roots that carry the best parts of the past into the future and leave the rest behind to rot away forever.

 

 

My heritage is French Canadian, German, and Scandinavian, but my Polish grandparents shaped me most. Their home was full of folk art, dolls, textiles, and painted furniture. It was one of my greatest sources of creativity as a child.

 

 

It wasn’t always a safe place, but those objects held a kind of magic and comfort I could hide behind. The world around me felt protective even when the people in it were frightening. Now I’m weaving those colors, stories, and patterns into my work.

 

 

An essential part of my practice is sculptural and dimensional work. I am now able to translate my painted world into three-dimensional form, giving its characters and symbolism life in the same way I did when I was younger.

 

 

There is a particular kind of wonder in holding something with depth and weight that began on a flat surface, allowing the work to move from painting into an object in the world, one that can be touched, lived with, and experienced from every side, much like the folk art I grew up with.

 

 

My art has always been deeply personal. Honoring both who I am today and where I came from has let me become the alchemist of a creative life, one where I have finally planted my own roots in extremely fertile soil. It has also brought so much inspiration into my world. There aren’t enough hours in the day to bring it all from thought into being, and that is exciting!

 

Aunia Kahn invites you to follow on Instagram and Facebook.

 

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