Artist statement
My surreal figurative oil paintings are vessels for the visions I channel through psychic intuition, plant medicines ceremonies, dream work, and repressed memories. Inspired by the DIY culture of Black Mountain College, I mix fashion design, painting, and performance, while employing symbology from tarot cards, religious iconography, queer culture, and domestic space. In my most recent paintings, I am exploring religion, disability, and processing the destruction from Hurricane Helene's flooding. I distort perspectives and figures in my paintings to reference how traumatic stress causes the brain to collage fragments of memory. In these collages of paint, I rewrite my experiences in a whimsical world.
Artist Bio
Sky Dai is the 2026 North Carolina Emerging Artist in Residence at Artspace. Sky Dai is a disabled, queer, emerging artist from Asheville and now living in Raleigh, NC. Their figurative oil paintings explore imagery from memories, relationships, medicine ceremonies, and the astral realm.After surviving Hurricane Helene’s flooding, and a bad accident that left them wheelchair bound and house bound for most of the past year, Sky dove head first into painting, again.
Sky has a BFA in fine arts and creative writing from Columbus College of Art and Design. Sky has received fellowships to be an artist in residence at the Vermont Studio Center and Ragdale. In 2022, Sky Dai received the Emerging Young Artists Award of Excellence from The Kennedy Center in Washington D.C. and had their work purchased for the permanent collection on Capitol Hill.
Sky Dai also makes and sells one of a kind hand-painted clothing and custom tarot decks. When they’re not making art, they’re probably reading tarot cards under the moon, searching for a swimming hole, or doing improvisational dance.
