IDA FLOREAK

ARTIST STATEMENT:

Ida Floreak is a New Orleans-based artist, originally from Cambridge, Massachusetts. She has a BFA from Rhode Island School of Design where she studied painting and scientific illustration. Ida's work is influenced by her studies in Rome, with RISD's European Honors Program and her work as an archeological illustrator on the Poggio Civitate Archaeological Project in Vescovado di Murlo.

Raised outside of organized religion, Ida turned to science and the natural world to answer questions about our origins and purpose, finding meaning and beauty in the mathematical structure and symmetry of natural objects. Pulling from her personal collection, she paints, bones, gems, leaves and insects in formations reminiscent of the Italian grotteschi and devotional art. Painting in an over-large scale, Ida attempts to give these small and humble objects a treatment otherwise reserved for saints or deities.