Artist Statement

The rupture doesn’t always arrive with force. Sometimes it comes disguised as noise, as light, as ritual. Sometimes it happens in places that were supposed to hold us, the bedroom, the kitchen, the garden.

I’m interested in what happens when the familiar is quietly broken, when spaces associated with safety and intimacy are compromised by something uninvited and unseen. The disturbance may be real or imagined, external or internal. What matters is the shift, the sense that something is no longer right.

At the center of my work is the emotional exchange between people and place, the marks we leave on each other, the way atmosphere absorbs and reflects psychological residue. The characters in my images exist at the edge of control. They do not pose; they react. They brace, resist, withdraw, perform. Their gestures carry the logic of rupture, where events unfold but their meaning is still settling.

My sensitivity to these moments comes from experience. I’ve lived in homes where safety was unreliable, where emotional volatility and withdrawal shaped daily life. These environments taught me to read silence, notice shifts in atmosphere, and anticipate collapse. They shaped my understanding of the performance of normalcy, even when something darker sits just beneath the surface. The spaces I construct echo this, a presence felt even when the disturbance is unseen.

These are not depictions of trauma, but of atmosphere. I’m interested in what lingers, what imprints and traces remain, when physical and emotional spaces have been unsettled but not restored. The visual language is subtle, but the atmosphere is charged.

Chrissy Lush
Lush.chrissy@gmail.com
914-424-9634