Comusina Celan (b 1985) is a mixed media artist who lives and works in Baltimore, Maryland. As the child of a builder, she watched as materials were manipulated and joined together to form dozens of homes. This early exposure to the building process continues to be a source of inspiration. After being awarded a fellowship to paint in San Jose, Costa Rica, and later a residency in northern Germany, Celan began to question the meaning of location, home, and our tenuous relationships to both place and other people. Celan lived in Munich, Germany for a year after graduation from the University of Georgia for cultural and language immersion; after which, she relocated to New Orleans, LA to begin her professional career as a painter. The city’s history as a port and stories of recovery after Katrina inspired Celan’s series titled “Home Sweet Home” – combining fables and imagined landscapes. Comusina Celan is currently pursuing an interdisciplinary MFA at the Maryland Institute College of Art in Baltimore.
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In my current work, I investigate ideas of home and our attempt to find our place in transient and surreal natural environments. These mixed media pieces are highly detailed and play with scale and pattern to create complex narratives.

Each piece tells the story of an evolving microcosm – landscapes that appear inhabitable while resonating a muted hostility. My compositions weave together images of comfort and a stability: homes, quilts, and flags; with the romantic impressions of travel and escape: migrating birds, trains, ships, and boats. This dichotomy represents the mixed desires of most contemporaries- a longing for constancy with the option of escape.

My work is significantly influenced by the skewed perspective and continuous narrative of 16th to 19th century Mughal miniatures combined with the line quality of traditional Japanese woodcuts.