Artist Statement
Sunshine's parents were of the 60’s “Hippie Generation”. She grew up in an era of discovery and self-reliance. While her parents were preoccupied with saving the environment and legalizing horticulture, she learned how to do things on her own and lead the others that cared to follow.
This free love and groovy background has lead her art to juxtapose cynicism and edginess with borders of dark comedy. She likes to push an issue as far as it can go. An early influence would have been her grandmother who was an established china painter here in Detroit. Who taught her to china paint when she was eight. She has recently revisited and re-purposed this ancient art and she believes that it will become a big part of things to come in her career. Other big influences on her art would include artists like Susan Beiner, Mark Ryden, and Chido Johnson, Gilda Snowden, Shepard Fairey, Charles McGee and Erik Olsen. Her main focus has been painting and spent most of training at College for Creative Studies (CCS) as a painter she has found a love in re-purposed/ found objects infused with sculpture and paint. Past and present, old and new, dirty and clean are didactic themes that seem to infiltrate her pieces.
Recently Sunshine has begun an investigation into borders and boundaries. She finds it compelling the hierarchies, social ramifications, and spatial connectivity of the sub boundaries and borders in Detroit.
Sunshine's parents were of the 60’s “Hippie Generation”. She grew up in an era of discovery and self-reliance. While her parents were preoccupied with saving the environment and legalizing horticulture, she learned how to do things on her own and lead the others that cared to follow.
This free love and groovy background has lead her art to juxtapose cynicism and edginess with borders of dark comedy. She likes to push an issue as far as it can go. An early influence would have been her grandmother who was an established china painter here in Detroit. Who taught her to china paint when she was eight. She has recently revisited and re-purposed this ancient art and she believes that it will become a big part of things to come in her career. Other big influences on her art would include artists like Susan Beiner, Mark Ryden, and Chido Johnson, Gilda Snowden, Shepard Fairey, Charles McGee and Erik Olsen. Her main focus has been painting and spent most of training at College for Creative Studies (CCS) as a painter she has found a love in re-purposed/ found objects infused with sculpture and paint. Past and present, old and new, dirty and clean are didactic themes that seem to infiltrate her pieces.
Recently Sunshine has begun an investigation into borders and boundaries. She finds it compelling the hierarchies, social ramifications, and spatial connectivity of the sub boundaries and borders in Detroit.