‘the color of home’ collection

artist statement

‘the color of home’ series emerged for the Mika as a subconscious need to carry home with her. The body of work seeks to explore what we keep with us from place, and what inevitably slips away through abstracted color palettes and compositions drawn from the Bay Area landscape. While the vibrant hues and simplified forms may appear cheerful at first glance, they reveal a deeper meditation on nostalgia. 

By abstracting color from landscape and elevating it as the subject itself, this figure-ground switch creates an immersive experience of an environment, rather than its literal representation. Components of this work are also derived from the artist’s childhood playing with her mother’s Pantone chip books as a child, and watching her father paint pastel landscapes. The work marries these two influences of home and childhood as well. Through mixed composition of realism and abstract, exaggerated colors and childlike simplification, these paintings try to tap into moments, and feelings that feel just out of reach. 

The geometric blocks acknowledge our contemporary, digital relationship with color and image-making, while suggesting how we now carry and construct our memories. Through the attempt to eternalize a memory on canvas, the works seek to be both reflection on impermanence and present meditation on preciousness.