Autumn White

Autumn White is a pictorial artist and printmaker studying in San Jose, California. Autumn teaches screen printing at small artist markets throughout the Bay Area, and gives guest lectures on watercolor and oil glazing techniques at local universities. They work in archaeology and the arts and use symbolism from both fields to produce images grounded in both the emotional and the scientific. They are set to enter the MA Anthropology program at SJSU in the fall, where they will use published articles, painted illustrations, and public teaching demonstrations to communicate their research to a broader audience. Find more at: https://amwillustrator.my.canva.site/.

Artist’s Statement

Autumn’s work explores human and nonhuman animal hybrids, analyzing what it means when their bodies and ours are entangled. Their work venerates the unlovable, lurid, obscene or frightening so that they can examine what it is to feel subhuman: to fear yourself, your body, or the people you love. Autumn paints hazy and indistinct categories of personhood: mythic pale-horse omens, women escaping their lives by turning into fish, fantastic fairy insects shapeshifting before our eyes. The subjects of Autumn’s paintings are a little lonely, a little tender, and sometimes, a little dangerous. The biddable faces and bodies of their figures have pincers and claws to defend themselves, demanding the viewer’s attention.