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• Claudia Kunin: The Holy Ghost Stories

Adam & Eve

Claudia Kunin was born August, 1954, in Los Angeles, CA. She received a BS in Psychology from the University of Oregon.

Kunin has intermittently had exhibitions of her personal work while pursuing a career in commercial photography. A partial client list includes: AT&T, American Express, Wells Fargo Bank, Concorde Pictures, Pfizer Pharmaceuticals, Ford Motor Co., Sprint Communications, Rolling Stone, Martha Stewart, Wm. Morrison and Penguin Books. She is now solely pursuing her fine art and has a number of bodies of accomplished work, including: "Revenant", "Ghost Stories" and "Holy Ghost Stories".

Our Lady of Cancer

Much like the manner of painters who would make their background images from a book of sketches, Claudia constructs her backgrounds from various photographs she has taken all over the world. She then shoots the models in the studio to illustrate the allegorical tale, and afterwards knits the picture together from all the various elements. These powerful archetypal images are virtually unique in contemporary art.

Artist's Statement about the "Holy Ghost Stories" series:

In late March 2006, the morning before visiting the island of Lindisfarne, also known as Holy Island, I had a revelatory dream. The dream was later confirmed in waking life. I was to follow a new path, barefoot...upon "Holy Ground". I came back to America knowing that I was ready to commence a new series called "Holy Ghosts". I studied Leonardo da Vinci's notebooks. A good soaking in Caravaggio, Rubens and Hieronymus Bosch paintings followed. I read parts of the Bible and Dante's Inferno, as well as Daniel Defoe's "The Secrets of the Invisible World Disclosed". There is a long standing history of art as a transcendental experience. I am endeavoring to materialize the immaterial...to enrapture an unwitting audience, and convince them there is evidence of a life unseen. The composite images in the series are portals, thresholds between this world and the "other". They tell tales that bring us to the nexus of fear and faith, reuniting us with popular ideas whose threads have run through Western civilization for millennia. A new realm of the deep occult is created, allowing the viewer to experience a rich and ambiguous space.

I have experienced many profound coincidences in pursuit of each image. The meaning is clear. I must continue to make these images. I am being called to do so.