Under the Wolf Moon
by D Kessinger
Under the Wolf Moon inhabits a mental space between dreams and memories, drifting easily into forgetfulness and beyond. D Kessinger’s chunky, textured surfaces are slowly built up, scraped back, and reworked over and over, transforming the act of making into a meditation without a fixed destination. She explores feminist themes through rich surfaces created with traditional and water-based oil paints, Liquitex, and wax media on linen.
This current series of paintings serves as a physical manifestation of memory—an imprint of her mental landscape, where dreams and reality blur, and time ebbs and flows between clarity and forgetfulness. The process is intuitive and meditative, embracing layering, removal, and reinvention. Thick, textured surfaces emerge slowly, only to be scraped away, revealing echoes of past gestures beneath. Some pieces rest for months between sessions, allowing them to settle and shift organically. Though without a predetermined outcome, her works often return to familiar landscapes, distant vistas, and abstracted fragments of the body or the earth as seen from above—floating between presence and absence, past and present.
About the Artist
As a lifelong painter, I explore the intersections of abstraction, narrative, and the ephemeral nature of memory. My work is deeply rooted in personal experience, reflecting fragments of moments, emotions, and impressions that evolve over time. Through vibrant color, dynamic form, and layered textures, I aim to create visual dialogues that resonate across identities, inviting viewers into an intimate yet universally familiar space of recollection and introspection.
Beyond my painting practice, I am a curator, filmmaker, and advocate for feminist art history. My video works and oral history projects document the legacies of pioneering feminist artists, including Mary Beth Edelson, Nancy Spero, Janet Henry, Carolee Schneemann, and Kate Millett. My films have been exhibited internationally, and my contributions to feminist archival projects have been preserved in institutions such as the Rhizome ArtBase at the New Museum and NYU’s Fales Library. Through collaboration, curation, and artistic practice, I strive to preserve, celebrate, and expand the discourse of feminist art for future generations.
With a BFA in Sculpture from Kent State University and an MA in Arts Administration from the University of Kentucky, I continue to bridge the realms of creation, preservation, and advocacy, forging connections between past and present, abstraction and narrative, personal history and collective memory.
For more information on D Kessinger visit her website and follow them on Instagram.
