Eileen Cubbage (b. 1976, Philadelphia, PA) holds an MFA in Painting from Maryland Institute College of Art and a BFA in Illustration from Syracuse University. She has participated in residencies and exhibitions at the Virginia Center for the Creative Arts, Delaware Center for Contemporary Arts, New York Studio School Drawing Marathon, Pyramid Atlantic Paper Studio, Takt Kunstprojektraum Berlin, Textile Quintet at FAVElab Greece, Integrative Somatic Arts Certification at Unity Space Athens, Butoh Invasion at STOA Center for Body Art Studies in Sirence, Turkey, and Arthouse Pani in central Mexico. She has worked as an educator, designer and illustrator, having taught at Moore College of Art and Design, University of the Arts, Fleisher Art Memorial, SCAD Hong Kong/Savannah. She is currently developing curriculum for somatic and movement-based performance drawing and designing a comprehensive digital archive on mark-making as a contemplative practice.
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I see the painting body as a living threshold—a place where sensation, memory, and emotion converge, revealing how identity and perception are always shifting. Rooted in experiential performance and influenced by Didier Anzieu’s idea of the Skin Ego, my work explores the skin as both boundary and vessel, mediating the exchange between inner and outer worlds. Abstraction becomes a lived process—one that invites us into the unknown, where form takes shape through the body’s movement in space, unfolding in relationship.
I work across materials, blending traditional techniques like dyeing, tufting, and painting with digital processes. My video projections reflect the body’s ability to bridge the sensory and the immaterial. The tension between raw texture and smooth interface speaks to how touch holds memory—how it grounds us—while polished surfaces can create distance, masking the body's vulnerability.
Influenced by Butoh performance and Michel Serres’ reflections on bodily knowledge, my practice is a performance of transformation—a cyclical breaking apart and re-forming of shapes, much like the body’s own encounters with the unfamiliar. By merging with materials, abstraction becomes a way of knowing—one that reaches beyond the conscious mind and holds the complexity of being.
I’m drawn to the existential as something shared—an open-ended inquiry into how our bodies respond to what is felt but not always seen. In this space, analog and digital materials intertwine, shaping a shifting sense of self that resists final answers and leaves room for ongoing becoming.