Thresholds
Christine Huskisson

Artist Statement:  More than a year ago, I set out to paint the works in this exhibition intending to explore our relationship with water. The original title was, in fact, “Waterborne”. I've always loved water as a place to alter your perception of the world - ears under, eyes closed and weightless. Willingly crossing that threshold is always gentle and, occasionally, even spiritual.
As I pushed on scale and materials in the painting process, I realized that the act of painting itself also evoked an affective encounter beyond the material.

Waterborne #1 was initially composed with my regular studio model - her face resting just above calm water. When I angled the canvas to accommodate the dripping paint, another threshold emerged - the brink of overabundance and drought. Our constant moving between those states of anxiousness is, in fact, another relationship we have all come to have with water. 

Auditory deprivation, or a way to occasionally silence the noise, was the intent behind Waterborne #2. Yet, this painting also transformed under the subtle chromatic effect that Payne's Grey can elicit - the sinews of her neck muscles spoke of strain, and the look in her eyes started to question some more significant meaning in life. 

In Waterborne #3, the final painting in the series of large canvases, pleasure or maybe pain now emanates from the few oxygen bubbles still dangling in her nostrils. At the same time, her mouth is slightly open - perhaps a hopeful sign that the sinking is a willing choice and that she can lift and breathe again.

Working with the pigments and the broom-sized brushes physically moved me from one state of knowledge to another; it changed my perception of the material world just like water. The creation of this body of work forced me to contemplate the threshold between the material and the immaterial.

What I discovered is a place just in between - when we are no longer one thing and not yet quite the other. Light, inspiration, and strength fill that liminal space, it is genuinely weightless and rejuvenating.


Christine Huskisson is an artist and community collaborator. She co-founded and was co-publisher of UnderMain, Inc., a Kentucky not-for-profit magazine dedicated to arts and culture, from 2014-2022 – her lead on the annual Critical Mass Series was in collaboration with the Great Meadows Foundation and statewide arts organizations for six years. Holding dual master’s degrees in art history and business administration, Master’s Thesis: “Conceptual Art and the Interpretive and Exhibition Functions of the Museum,” (2002), Huskisson worked as Adjunct Faculty in Art History (museum studies) at the University of Kentucky, where her collaborative research and teaching style received a Commonwealth Collaborative Grant. That $10,000 award seeded Kentucky’s first public art app, TakeItArtside, a project she co-founded with her students and continued to administer outside of her role at the University until an attempt to monetize resulted in the University claiming intellectual property rights. 

As Executive Director of Galleries and Collections for Georgetown College, Huskisson helped establish the Dr Donald and Dorothy Jacobs Gallery, where she secured the first piece of public art on that campus (2002: L’Chaim by Dennis Whitcopf). In 2009, Huskisson co-organized the Legacy Trail Public Art Consortium to plan and implement Lexington’s Legacy Trail Public Art Master Plan. She has also contributed to the Exhibitions and Programming Cabinet and Board of Directors for The Lexington Art League, Kentucky Museum and Heritage Alliance, Woodford County Heritage Committee, and in 2020 the Artist Relief Trust by Elevator Artist Resource.