Caitlin Gill is a mixed media artist living in Baltimore, Maryland. She has a B. A in Drawing and Painting from Towson University and an MFA in Curatorial Practice and Art Criticism from the Ontario College of Art and Design. Gill uses printmaking, sculpting, drawing, painting, collage, and fiber to create artwork that explores ideas of identity, femininity, and domesticity.
Gill’s work examines the patriarchy, the male gaze and gender through animal and insect portraits. The juxtaposition between lace, pressed flowers, and other materials with the foreground imagery of birds and bugs acts as a dialogue surrounding how the female identifying artist feels she must be perceived by society versus her experience performing gender. Using traditional craft materials and skills such as sewing, felting, crocheting, ceramics, scrapbook paper, doilies, stencils, and stamps, Gill also explores the divergence between craft and fine art and the implicit misogyny within the distinction between the two. Her work is labor intensive and acknowledges the invisibility of female labor in the home and in marriage and the lack of value inferred in “women’s work.” By Evoking ideas of discomfort and
repulsion, she encourages viewers to engage in the inherent violence exercised in the construct of the feminine.