My art is an expression of a journey through a secluded part of my mind. The mind is more than a collection of memories or a means to process emotions, but rather a combination of everything experienced from within and without, and from birth until death. The idea of the mind as an alternate world and a landscape to be explored is called mindscape. The boundary separating the mindscape from the physical realm is not always clear – there are some experiences that have a stronger presence in one world than in the other; what affects the body affects the mind, and vice versa. Some things are mirrored and others distorted. The further the exploration into this world of the mind, the more deeply it becomes known.
My creations provide spaces for reflection, serving as mirrors. Like wind on water, the symbolism and metaphor embedded in my work alters the mirror, resulting in a reflection unsure of whether to hide itself or make itself known, and an image seeking to be both misunderstood and vulnerable. The paper refuses the protection of the frame, the ink seeks its own path, the colors of dye rise and fall with the sun–all speak to fragility, change, and temporality. Stoic, dignified, beautiful Black figures and the bending, twisting, melting animals that surround them dance on the line of mindscape and here – where are they really? When are they really? How much is reflection and how much is mirror?
Celeste Lindsey is an artist currently living in San Antonio, Texas. In 2020, Lindsey graduated from the University of Texas at San Antonio with her Bachelor of Fine Arts degree in painting. She works primarily with India ink and cyanotype on paper. Using narrative, symbolism, metaphor, and abstraction, she creates both small-scale drawings and large-scale paintings that abandon the traditional stretched canvases and frames.
In 2018, Lindsey exhibited two ink drawings in the 3rd Annual Marilyn Dickey Juried Art Competition at the Sugar Land Art Center & Gallery in Houston, Texas. Lindsey was nominated by UTSA painting and drawing faculty in 2019 and 2020 to exhibit a piece in the San Antonio Art League Museum Annual Collegiate Exhibition. In 2019, Celeste Lindsey was nominated and accepted as one of twenty-six artists to spend the summer in residence at Yale Norfolk School of Art. In the fall of 2019, she exhibited a series of ink drawings in her first solo show titled Youth at Southtown Art Gallery in San Antonio, Texas. Her work was accepted in the College of Liberal and Fine Arts’ 35th and 36th Annual Juried Student Exhibitions at UTSA in 2019 and 2020. In 2023, Lindsey was accepted into both the third annual Summer Arts Festival and juried exhibition Undercurrent hosted by Contracommon Gallery in Austin, Texas. In addition, she was accepted as an artist in residence for Sulfur Studios’ 2023 summer session of their ON:View Artist in Residency Program in Savannah, Georgia. During this residency, she was featured in an article in the Savannah Now morning news written by Benjamin Winterhalter.