Cindy Bernhard

BIOGRAPHY

Born in 1989 in rural Illinois, Cindy Bernhard grew up on a pig farm with a pastoral landscape – a landscape that is now being turned into subdivisions, which she calls “distressing, because farming may be a way of life for some, but it is a necessity for everyone.” Inspired by these changes, her work is a romantic reverie of these disappearing spaces. In her pictures the pig recurs as a personal figurative metaphor to symbolise loss, alienation, desire, and love. Her paintings are objective representations but gleans aspects from non-objective modern aesthetics, such as the pictorial tension between deep space and a flatness that acknowledges the picture plane as well as synthetic color. In her work, Bernhard wants to create a spatial context for her figures to exist in, so she utilises a semi-surreal space or a space of the mind. “I conceive of my paintings as visual poems that utilise rhythmic relationships of scale, placement, and value to direct the emotional content of empathy, irony, playfulness, and humor.”

Bernhard's work has been exhibited in solo exhibitions, including Smoke and Prayers, Richard Heller, Santa Monica, California (2021); Candy Corn & Roaches, Shelter In Place Gallery, Boston (2020) and Mirror, Mirror, Vital Signs, Milwaukee, Wisconsin (2019), among others. Her work has also been showcased in group exhibitions, such as NADA, Andrew Rafacz Gallery, New York (2022); EXPO, Richard Heller Gallery, Chicago (2022); Porous Modes, Field Projects, New York (2021); Cave Canem, Eve Leibe Gallery, London (2021); Fake Real, Lubeznik Center For The Arts, Michigan City (2020); Reminiscence, One After 909, Chicago (2019) and Bridgeport Art Center 7th Annual Art Competition, the Bridgeport Art Center, Chicago (2019). 

She received a Bachelor's degree in Fine Arts from the American Academy of Art, Chicago (2011) and a Master's degree in Fine Arts from Laguna College of Art and Design, California (2014).

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