![]() You have these teals and pinks and reds that are really luscious and mouthwatering and candy-popping, and yet also sort of sickeningly sweet. "The kind of color that she's interested in is fascinating, because it is both alluring and then unsettling. ![]() ![]() To be clear, Dugan meant that as a compliment. "They're all a little off, right?" asked Annie Dugan about Koch's portraits. "I try to inject some nostalgia, some childishness, but then in the subject matter, something more sinister." "A lot of the inspiration behind this series comes from my desire to reconnect with the inner child, but also what I like to call it is honoring the reality of life," said Koch, sitting in her studio last week. Koch's recent pieces fall into a series called "Trauma Queens." "People were really very nice about that, and a lot of people told me that it made them feel good to see the woman hugging the chicken." This was the first Homegrown since the pandemic and I wanted to do something that felt a little more isolated, maybe to reflect the experiences that everyone had gone through," said Koch. "A lot of the Homegrown guides from years prior were these scenes of many, many people and crowds. (A chicken has long been the festival's visual symbol.) Even in Koch's painting for this year's Duluth Homegrown Music Festival Field Guide, there's an air of ineffable sadness to a flower-crowned figure embracing an indifferent fowl. Makeup runs down one face, another is streaked with what might be blood. Her recent subjects typically have expressions that are disaffected at best, vaguely distressed at worst. Amusement park colors and playful props convey a joyful exuberance, but the oil portraits are also suffused with melancholy. A 2020 graduate of the University of Wisconsin-Superior, Koch (pronounced like the cola brand) has developed a distinctive style of portraiture.
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