On this week’s Blank Canvas we are visited by Bahamian artist Lillian Blades, who lives and works in Atlanta, Georgia. Blades was born in Nassau in 1973 and strives, through her personal art practice and public art projects, to create and strengthen connections. Her assemblages bring painted canvas, fabric and found objects together, finding a post-postmodernist space between abstraction and representation. By using unquestionably feminine patterns and craft material in decentralized and formal compositions, Blades finds her own way through a familiar language of cubism and the readymade.
Blades has been back in The Bahamas for a three-month residency at The Current Gallery at Baha Mar, where she has been working on a large-scale commission for “Fairwind 2.0,” the second phase of the vast exhibition on display in the public spaces of the Baha Mar Convention Centre. During her time we were able to get her into the studio to speak about her life, how she came to art and how her practise has evolved over time to her amazing mixed media assemblages and paintings.
The Blank Canvas airs every Wednesday on Guardian Talk Radio, 96.9 FM.
