Artist Statement
Idgie Kagan creates intimate oil paintings that layer family photographs with intuitive mark-making, using inherited paintbrushes once belonging to her late grandmother, whom she called Tatia. Her artworks range from small, materially direct canvases (30 × 40 cm) to larger, more ambitious pieces built through translucent layers that obscure yet never fully erase what came before.
Kagan completed a Bachelor of Fine Arts (Honours) at RMIT University in 2025. Having always felt drawn to painting, even before developing technical skill or clear intent, she turned to her practice as a way of processing layered histories shaped by movement between the United States and Australia. This shifting geography, both physical and emotional, informs her understanding of time, memory, and belonging.
Her work explores the visceral bonds of matrilineal inheritance and how ancestral presence can manifest through material engagement. Drawing on photographs from her mother's archive, Kagan investigates memory as a fluid and evolving process rather than a fixed narrative. Her paintings position inherited objects as quasi-agents that actively shape meaning, framing creative practice itself as a form of intergenerational collaboration.
Through this practice-led research, Kagan contributes to contemporary discourse on feminist material practices and trauma-informed approaches to ancestral collaboration, offering painting as a methodology for accessing inherited, embodied knowledge that exists beyond language.