Liv Sciford, a Chicago-based artist works with mixed media, oil paintings, plaster, and stone. Through conflating actual life memories and imagined surroundings, Liv Sciford creates oil and mixed media painted vignettes that reconsider the lens through which recollection is viewed. On canvas, or sometimes physical relics from their past, soft edges and cool colors blur the lines between actual memory and idealization.

References to the human figure through shadows, amorphous shapes, and indirect portraits imply a vague familiarity to the subjects and evoke a sense of nostalgia. Attention to detail and patterns within their work mirror actual environments from their life. A rug from their current painting studio may show up in a work set in a former apartment – there is consistent overlap between past, present, and imagined. Their 3D work combines influence from modernist abstract ideas and Baroque portraiture busts to reflect the nuance of gender and their experience as a nonbinary individual. Sciford’s architectural 2D compositions and modernist-inspired sculptures frame the inherent struggle between their own personal history and what once was, what could have been, or what they’ve dreamt about.