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Running on Empty by Debbie.lee Miszaniec September 10-October 24th
Artist Statement
Running On Empty is an epic: Is it a hero’s journey or is it a tragedy? While that is yet to be known, it is a cautionary tale as told through the language of the starving artist; the language of food and of art.
Running on Empty brings together the genre of still life painting known as the banquet piece, as popularized during the 17th century Dutch Golden Age, along with the narrative paintings of art history, to talk about contemporary health and diet culture and the dilemmas of the individual caught between nature and culture.
I had developed an all encompassing fixation with food. It had infiltrated my art. I could spend long days painting the delicate colour variations of a boiled pierogi, the marbling of a smoked sausage, or the glisten on a glazed donut. Decades of restriction to attain and maintain a weight in the normal category had resulted in what should have been recognized as an eating disorder damaging both physical and mental health. Given the appeal of images of food to the chronically hungry, as documented in studies like the Minnesota Starvation Experiment (Ancel Keys,1945), and the emergence of terms like ‘food noise,’ it seems this phenomena may be far more relevant to our thin obsessed society than the official statistics on eating disorders would indicate.
In the Running On Empty paintings this small world of the banquet piece has grown big, moving from capturing a single experience of longing under glass for examination, to understanding how this experience of voluntary starvation shapes lives. This body of work is also about making a decision, to continue to be bound by old harmful beliefs or to reclaim ones power by releasing those beliefs. While the decision to break free may seem simple, it is complicated by structures of power and privilege. It can be difficult to give up a strategy that provides social protection even if it is damaging ones physical health and mental well being.
Artist Bio
Debbie.lee Miszaniec is a contemporary painter based in Calgary, Alberta. Her oil paintings bring the genre of still life known as the banquet piece, as popularized during the 17th century Dutch Golden Age, into contemporary spaces, to talk about health and diet culture. Drawing from scientific literature, art history and her own experience, Miszaniec has been developing a pictorial language of obsessively detailed depictions of food and art history references for the better part of a decade. Her work has been featured in regional juried exhibitions at the Art Gallery of St. Albert, Kiwanis Gallery in Red Deer, Stride’s Prairie Crocus Gallery in Calgary, and the Okotoks Art Gallery. She is the recipient of Canada Council for the Arts and Calgary Arts Development funding in support of this work. Miszaniec received a Bachelor Fine Art (painting) from the Alberta College of Art + Design (now AUArts) in 2008. She currently lives and works out of her home studio in Calgary.
