Artist Statement

A matter of reverence, in the modern world…

The sensation of belonging in the natural world that Kessler experienced growing up, have supported her art practices for over a decade. Themes of deep ecology, spirituality, and relationship weave through the paintings.

Kessler’s work explores our human capacity to experience the awe and wonder by surrendering to the intelligence and magnificence of “the more-than-human world”. She considers the purpose of awe and wonder as vital to awakening consciousness and as an evolutionary tool.

Referring to her studio practice as “a living prayer”, the act of deep listening and responding to nature is one way that she develops the right relationship with it. Tapping into the threshold between what we perceive to be reality and what is beyond, her works aim to bridge inner and outer states and encourage broader ways of seeing and sensing the elements of existence.

Kessler honours the mystery of beauty and merges the ordinary and non-ordinary world, with subtle surrealism. Her paintings invite the presence of the divine, while simultaneously plugging the viewer firmly into the fecundity of the natural world.