ARTIST STATEMENT
Exploring body, gender, sex, and death, the scenes in my drawings and paintings decompose and amalgamate figural surrogates of my selfhood—simultaneously sexed and non-binary or singular and shared. Where my figures trade slippery symbols of gender back and forth within the urgent and uneasy harbor of their vaginal nests.
As my figures (amused and anxious) metastasize in mothering, mortal, and meaty transition, they beg for, bask in, and birth their own balm. These Queer spaces gestate these Queer figures, searching our space from theirs—not only for symptoms of our softness, but for our own efforts to match their labor of looking.
In my 9 x 12” graphite drawings, I focus on the feverish layering of mark-making to explore immediate depictions of my own body brewed by the empty, wind-stinging wetness of bogland. Where the meat of my figures is turned to tender leather turned to landscape. Preservations of self, tightened and tanned by the passage of time—parched despite the dampness in their vacant and vague dreamscapes. Or too, totems of meat-morphing and surreal selfhoods, coupled only by the cacophony or quiet of thought-like captions burping in negative space.
Whereas, in my (roughly) 6 x 4’ scaled oil paintings—unstretched, both to suggest the liminal limpness of flesh and to reject the rigidity of the frame—I am exploring the flattened figurehood of Athenian vase painting, the surrogate and transitory natures of body and self, and the incubatory and itchy meat of corporeality. In this, I paint pathways that both celebrate and scorn stipulations of sex, body, and expression. Casting groups of classically righteous self-portraits and sweethearts, stripped nude of projected singularity and engorged instead by their own sexual specificity. And in some cases, by their meaty metastasis blurring distinctions of selfhood. Their scenes suggest unease, perhaps violence. Yet the labial caverns that they inhabit provide a womb-like shelter of mothering retreat—gestating the bone-deep bruising of their grief.
By contrast (or rather, by combination), my mixed-media collage work morphs and merges both the processes of my drawing and painting practices and, quite literally, the figures themselves. And in this transitory act of snipping, shifting, tossing, and Frankenstein taping, my compositions are fundamentally non-committal and impermanent until, with the suddenness of death, they become finite and freak fusions of body and self.
Ultimately, across all my works, I am toeing the line between sad-sack slapstick and the guttural ache of grief. And it is through my exploration of multiple mediums and approaches, that I achieve and clarify both my process and the pieces themselves.
BIOGRAPHY
Miranda Reichhardt (she/they) is a Richmond-based professional artist and art professor instructing for VCUarts (Arts Foundations, Painting & Printmaking departments) and the Virginia and North Community College Systems.
Since graduating with an MFA in Painting and Drawing from UNC-G in 2019, Miranda has taught and developed over 85 postsecondary art courses while maintaining an active and exhibiting art practice exploring narrative notions of gendered and surrogate selfhood through the (often amused, often anxious) thick of threatened tenderness. Miranda has shown work in Virginia, North Carolina, Chicago, and New York, celebrating three solo exhibitions (2019, 2021, 2022), organizing yearly Drawing Marathon residencies with a cohort of North Carolina creatives and academics (2023, 2024, 2025), and holding the title of Regional Emerging Artist in Residence at Artspace (2021).
Miranda’s painting and drawing practice focuses on the body through the self-portrait, contextualized in narrative by the dual contradictions of punch-lines and wailing. Here, Miranda explores non-binary gender, the nauseating treat of corporeality, w(oh man!)hood, dreamscapes as harbor, the soft specificity and seismic slap of death, the fluidity of selfhood (amongst all things), the stickiness of sexuality, and the guttural ocean of grief in our guts.
EDUCATION
UNC-Greensboro Master of Fine Arts — 2019
The College of William & Mary Bachelor of Arts — 2015
SOLO EXHIBITIONS
Squelch, Greensboro Project Space July, 2022, Greensboro, NC
Bedroom Banners, Artspace February 2021, Raleigh, NC
Wants, Palms, and Pits, Greensboro Project Space April 2019, Greensboro, NC
GROUP EXHIBITIONS
Belonging, A.D Gallery (UNC-Pembroke) March 2026, Pembroke, NC
University of Mary Washington Faculty Exhibition, Dupont Gallery September 2023, Fredericksburg, VA
ROE 2.0, Woman Made Gallery, Virtual Exhibition January 2023
Women’s Work 34th Anniversary Show, Old Courthouse Arts Center, June 2021, Woodstock, IL
2021 Regional Erotic Arts Show, Digital Display, March 2021, Rochester, NY
2020 Regional Erotic Arts Show, Digital Display, March 2020, Rochester, NY
2020 ALL Women Artists, Contemporary Art Gallery Online February 2020
Guilford Art Faculty Biennial, Hege Library Gallery January 2020, Greensboro, NC
Reclaiming My Time, National Humanities Center September - December 2019, Raleigh, NC
UNCG MFA Thesis Exhibition, Weatherspoon Art Museum May 2019, Greensboro, NC
Recurrent Elements, Greensboro Project Space September 2018, Greensboro, NC
Drawing Marathon Exhibition, Greensboro Project Space September 2017, Greensboro, NC
Small Exhibitions Juried Show, LibertyTown Arts Gallery (Honorable Mention Winner) November 2016, VA
Chalk and Cheese… Senior Art Exhibition, Andrews Gallery May 2015, Williamsburg, VA
RESIDENCIES
Drawing Marathon! May 2023, 2024, 2025, Greensboro, NC
Regional Emerging Artist Residency, Artspace July 2019 - January 2020, Raleigh, NC
AWARDS/GRANTS
Howard Scholarship August 2018 - May 2019
Helen A. Thrust Scholarship August 2017 - May 2019
Holderness Fellowship August 2017 - May 2018
Minerva Grant August 2017 - May 2018
Joseph Palin Thorley Scholarship May 2014 - May 2015
TALKS/SYMPOSIA
Artist Talks with Annah February 2021
UNC-G MFA Artist Gallery Talk May 2019
UNC-G MFA Thesis Exhibition Artist Talk April 2019
Recurrent Elements Exhibition Artist Talk September 2018
William & Mary Undergraduate Medieval and Renaissance Studies Symposium Speaker March 2013
TEACHING/WORK EXPERIENCE
Virginia Commonwealth University — Art Foundations & Painting/Printmaking Professor
August 2024 - PRESENT, Richmond, VA
Christopher Newport University — 2D Design Adjunct Associate Professor
August 2025 - December 2026, Newport News, VA
University of Mary Washington — Design Principles Instructor
August 2023 - May 2024, Fredericksburg, VA
Germanna Community College: ART Foundations of Drawing & Life Drawing Instructor
January 2023 - PRESENT, Fredericksburg, VA
Virginia Peninsula Community College: ART Foundations of Drawing & Design Principles Instructor
September 2023 - May 2024, Hampton, VA
Virginia Museum of Fine Arts — Gallery Associate
2023, Richmond, VA
UNC-Greensboro — ART 221: Adjunct Life Drawing Instructor, ART 201: Adjunct Foundations of Drawing Instructor, ART 221: Adjunct Intermediate Drawing Instructor
August 2018 - May 2023, Greensboro, NC
Guilford College — ART 201: Adjunct Foundations of Drawing Instructor and Drawing Explorations Instructor
September 2019 - May 2023, Greensboro, NC
Guilford Technical Community College — ART 120: Adjunct Foundations of Drawing Instructor
August 2021 - December 2021, Greensboro, NC
Rowan-Cabarrus Community College — ART 201: Adjunct Drawing I & II Instructor
January 2020 - May 2021, Salisbury, NC
Surry Community College — ART 111: Art Appreciation Instructor
January 2020 - PRESENT, Yadkinville, NC
UNCG-Greensboro — Art 220: Intermediate Drawing Assistant
January 2018 - May 2018, Greensboro, NC
UNC-Greensboro — Art 110: Survey Art History Graduate Assistant
January 2018 - May 2018, Greensboro, NC
UNC-Greensboro — Art 100: Introduction to Art Graduate Assistant
August 2017 - December 2017, Greensboro, NC
Private Painting Instructor
2019 - PRESENT
LibertyTown Arts Workshop — Summer Camp Drawing & Painting Instructor
August 2016 - July 2018 Fredericksburg, VA
LibertyTown Arts Workshop — Gallery Assistant
August 2016 - August 2018, Fredericksburg, VA