About the Artist

Creative Statement

Collectively, my artistry presents a visual language that considers varying aspects of an introspective healing process, navigating through layers of paint and compatible media to arrive at a cohesive course for the viewer, offering different entry-points for the eye. Through precise linework and rich bursts of color, I showcase a blend of patterned reactions through an assortment of twists and turns that merge with, and therefore shape, whatever situation comes next. Originally developed in tandem with my recovery from a serious spinal cord injury, my abstract style offers the idea of art as an outlet through which emotions may be processed and channeled in nonviolent ways. Once able to see my creative output hit a material surface, I can digest the various thoughts and sensations that occur within myself and better understand how a composition morphs into a finished artwork supported by a solidified state of mind.

Correspondingly, I look to translate my experiences into an approachable framework that exists within a shared state of growth, both in and out of the studio. Referencing identifiable abstract techniques, my work continues to function as a visible form of peer support that offers cathartic imagery and stimulates dialogue and integrated conversation. As a teaching tool, my forthcoming work will dive into book arts to retroactively strengthen an autobiographical narrative that brings abstraction into focus, delivers historical context, and bolsters active social practice. By asking people to contemplate my stylistic language, I hope that others acknowledge their own communicative approaches, participate in contemporary matters, and create their own transformative pathways forward, too.

Cyd Gottlieb (b. 1989, Ohio, USA) is a multidisciplinary artist based in Toledo, Ohio, and her work focuses on creative problem-solving strategies that look to experiential, visual, and interpretive programming methods. From a socially engaged standpoint, she has exhibited artifacts through the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum, performed at the ICA/Boston, and contributed to cultural and architectural texts published by Harvard University Press. Career highlights include group shows with Calico (NY), Wavelength Space (TN), Peel Gallery (NC), River House Arts (OH), and Akron Soul Train (OH), plus a solo show with Gathered Glass (OH).

In January 2023, Cyd traveled to the Blue Ridge Mountains of North Carolina to dedicate time to book arts as a Winter Residency fellow at Penland School of Craft. In November 2023, she accepted an Emerging Artist award from the Burkholder Project in Lincoln, Nebraska to support her studio practice.

Looking to 2025, now tapping into the root of why she makes art, Cyd will dive deeper into intimate survival stories and lean into cultural concepts as she develops a new body of work intended for the Burkholder Project, which has received direct support from a project grant through the Ohio Arts Council, in addition to a grant from the Arts Commission of Greater Toledo.

Locally, Cyd has designed and instructed expressive arts workshops as a visiting teaching artist for the Thomas M. Wernert Center, a mental health community center for adults in Northwest Ohio. Recently, she has also partnered as a visiting teaching artist with Youth Advocate Programs, which is a community-based alternative to youth incarceration. Presently, Cyd collaborates with Culture Clash Records in Toledo, Ohio.

A self-taught artist, Cyd holds a BA in Hispanic Language and Literatures from Boston University. Her work is available for purchase through the Collector’s Corner section of the Museum Store at the Toledo Museum of Art and through Wavelength Space’s flat file program.