ARTIST’S STATEMENT | BIO | CV

While I move more and more into the contemplative aspects of art,  painting with "hot wax and liquid dyes on thirsty cloth" is an apt way to describe the work I have done for 40 years. My background in fibers includes graduate studies, training in the Japanese kimono industry, research in the traditional Japanese classical arts and meditative time on the cushion.
My work reflects 18 years of life in Kyoto, life in Indonesia and New England as well as a year in solitude, 2014 — 2015, in a small hut in a New Zealand wilderness.

I continue to work with applied dyes, and hot wax on silk; a meditative process for me; centering and ecstatic; both planned and spontaneous. I work with color and pattern, layering and mark making with resist-dye techniques, using the materials of acid as well as natural dyes, ahimsa (non-harm) silk fabric and ganryo pigment.

In the past many images for my work came from textile research, ancient craft traditions, natural surroundings and a delight in process; however a 2015 exhibition focused on making ‘silence visable’. This follows an interest in the spiritual qualities of cloth, transformation that began with the creation of a series of seven kesa (Buddhist monastic robes) now in the collection of the Peabody Essex Museum, Salem MA. These cloths of healing and unity encouraged me to present my work in a freer form, as images for meditation on flowing layered silk.
My work is a centering and a meditation in this diverse world.

— Kiranada Sterling Benjamin
June 2016

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Click here to read Kiranada's statement from the catalogue of her Spring 2011 show in Bali.