Talia J. Dudley is artistically talented. Collectors know it. Artists know it. And, refreshingly, Dudley knows it. “I’m confident,” she says simply. “I’m good at art.” Her assuredness stems from her artistic process, one that relies heavily on her dreams and on exploring the vicissitudes of the human psyche. “My focus is on the architecture of the mind, the subconscious and the conscious,” Dudley explains. Emotions, memories that pile up like layers of sediment, self-awareness that changes depending on which “corridor” you travel in your mind—these are the threads Dudley teases out in drawings, paintings and digital art.
She starts with a concept, decides which medium best suits it and gets to work, usually with an architectural shape or line that eventually grows into something more complex and expressed through light, shadow and planes. It can take a day or a year to finish, she says. Of course, it helps when she can focus. During a recent artist-in-residence program at Rancho Linda Vista, for example, she abandoned the distractions of her daily life in Mesa to wander through a hundred acres of desert trails in Oracle. This “meditation in movement” served up the basis for her exhibition, “Little Trails,” a collection of 18-by-24-inch graphite drawings. The fulfilling experience is one Dudley hopes to recreate with more residencies and showings in the coming months.
