Lydia Maria Pfeffer is an artist, who currently lives and works in Los Angeles. Born and raised in a small mountain village in Austria, Pfeffer grew up with art and music as leisurely, everyday activities, more in the form of tradition than academic training. She left home at the age of nineteen and traveled the world, settling first in London and later in New York, where she lived for 11 years and where she also began to study Fine Arts. She continued her studies at the School of the Art Institute in Chicago, where she graduated with her MFA in 2016.
Pfeffer came to painting via music and performance, and these influences can be seen in her theatrical approach to painting. She takes her cue not only from personal experience with pagan (now Christianized) traditions, such as the Krampus, Fasching (Mardi Gras), fairy- and folk tales and literature, but also myths and stories from around the world to create personal epics and a cosmos in which her shape shifters and hybrid creatures live. It is a place where underdogs, freaks and outcasts are unabashedly celebrated and unapologetically free.
Her life as a bartender has nurtured an intense relationship with the world of human behavior and the complexities of celebration. She presents worlds that are morally ambiguous and, without judgment, tell stories of masking, un-masking and transformation. Often the question, whether the mask or the wearer represent the true identity, remains.
Pfeffer’s works come forth through the intimate exploration of material (oil, india ink, clay ) and the continuous conversation with her own psyche. Pfeffer is interested in the absurd, the grotesque, the vulnerable and and how we navigate our fascination with it. Her attraction to anthropomorphism and personification can be traced back to early childhood years, where she fell in love with fables and their theatrical interpretations, as well as Egyptology. Pfeffer is interested in escapism as revelation, and investigates the human experience through the language of her anthropomorphic creatures.
Pfeffer came to painting via music and performance, and these influences can be seen in her theatrical approach to painting. She takes her cue not only from personal experience with pagan (now Christianized) traditions, such as the Krampus, Fasching (Mardi Gras), fairy- and folk tales and literature, but also myths and stories from around the world to create personal epics and a cosmos in which her shape shifters and hybrid creatures live. It is a place where underdogs, freaks and outcasts are unabashedly celebrated and unapologetically free.
Her life as a bartender has nurtured an intense relationship with the world of human behavior and the complexities of celebration. She presents worlds that are morally ambiguous and, without judgment, tell stories of masking, un-masking and transformation. Often the question, whether the mask or the wearer represent the true identity, remains.
Pfeffer’s works come forth through the intimate exploration of material (oil, india ink, clay ) and the continuous conversation with her own psyche. Pfeffer is interested in the absurd, the grotesque, the vulnerable and and how we navigate our fascination with it. Her attraction to anthropomorphism and personification can be traced back to early childhood years, where she fell in love with fables and their theatrical interpretations, as well as Egyptology. Pfeffer is interested in escapism as revelation, and investigates the human experience through the language of her anthropomorphic creatures.
