Before even applying brush to canvas, Kristina Arntz uses her background as a graphic designer to visualize a painted work electronically—sometimes in full and sometimes in detail. This technique allows her to explore a full spectrum of compositions and directions in advance. Incorporating themes that range from landscapes to silhouettes, Arntz’s paintings are, in her own words, “a deliberating and uplifting means of expressing emotion.”

Whether bold or soft, realistic or abstract, detailed or simplistic, the emotions expressed by her works are motivated by memory as much as imagination. The essential substance of her works are formed by encountered surroundings and lived experiences. Just as a particular memory is submerged in oceanic time, buoyed momentarily only to recede back into unconsciousness, there is a greater context implied by perspectives Arntz has chosen to recreate. The suggestion of there being more than what is given to the eye lends her paintings a sense of tranquil depth: they subtly guide the viewer toward recognitions she is already familiar with.