Biography
Kristina West is a Canadian artist, born in 1980 in Vancouver. Known for her narrative paintings that investigate the impulse of creation, she uses themes of interior spaces, hope, and masterpieces to articulate a spiritual presence that exists amongst our physical reality. She explores the landscape of the consciousness enveloped in the physical world.
Kristina was a sensitive young girl who used theater and religion to express her inner world. Kristina was a professional child actress who had a roll in the film Little Woman, and toured with the Vancouver Youth Theater.
Studying Art History at University of Victoria, Kristina took a gap year to see first hand the art in the galleries of Europe for a year. Upon her return to UVIC she dropped out, built her portfolio at the Victoria College of Art to be accepted in the Fine Art Department of University of Victoria in 2002; graduating with a BFA in 2004. Kristina started a performance art club and developed a Rorschach ink style of drawing narratives. At the time, Kristina documented narratives she could see in everyday life. She now equates her ability to see representation in abstract forms stemming from her dyslexic thinking.
After spending a year working in the Set Decorating in the Vancouver Film Industry in 2004, she moved to Beijing to work in amateur theater and go to underground punk shows. In 2005 she moved to London, UK to work in the art world. After meeting her husband there, she worked at Nelly Duff Gallery and lived near the White Cube in Hoxton Square. She moved back to Vancouver to have a family in 2010 and started making art regularly at The Beaumont Studios in 2008, when her youngest daughter went into Kindergarten.
Known for her narrative paintings that investigate the impulse of creation, she uses themes of the interior world, hopeful news articles, and references to past famous paintings to articulate a spiritual presence that exists amongst our physical reality. She would like to prove the landscape of the consciousness enveloped in the physical world.