mcauleyhouseartists: Artist profile.... Kathy

Monday, December 5, 2016

Artist profile.... Kathy

In my studio.....

I've been making art since I was about three years old. I remember my father bringing home pads of paper from his office and I would sit on the floor drawing until I was instructed to go to bed. So- I felt pretty lucky that there seemed to be an endless amount of paper for me to play with. My father had a set of miniature battle ships in a box from his service in the Navy during World War II. I would take one of the ships out and just look at it and then try to draw it the best I could.

For me, art has this strong grounding quality that I feel so blessed to have in my life- even 57 years later from being that three year old child. As I like to say, " When in doubt- make art."

I don't really have one style of art that I prefer over another- just as long as I can create something- be it a journal page, a collage, or painting. I work a lot with mixed media, which I love- as the possibilities are endless with combinations of paint, paper, stencils, fabric, etc.

The art featured below is a combination of work recently completed as well as some favorite pieces from past projects.

Mixed Media Paintings

Below- acrylic paintings

Below- Collages

The art above is a collection of random drawings (doodles) that I love to do while sitting at my desk.

I'm probably best known as an abstract painter. The painting above, Finding the Spirit, was done several years ago. I wanted to create a piece of work that captured the Grace we all have within us.

As a facilitator and member of the McAuley House art program, I'm constantly inspired by my fellow artists. My group always inspires me to do better, stay strong, have faith, and trust the process.

Compassion is the keen awareness of the interconnectedness of all things ~ Thomas Merton

About the Art Program

5 Ways to Grow as an Artist

So how would a Cassatt or a Henri or Picasso approach painting differently than we do today? How might this heartfelt fear of others controlling our painting process impact our self-understanding as artists? Here are five possible answers:

1. Making a successful picture is not the goal. Think of periods, such as childhood, when we grew, our self-understanding changed and we became more of who we are. There was an endless stream of events where we expressed ourselves and slowly began to discover the things that pleased us. As with the sense of freedom characterized above, the entire payoff was growth. The events of life when we grow are the things that happen along the way. Making art should be exactly the same. Paintings are just the series of events or steps we take. Let them go. Keep moving. Or as Henri implored, “Keep living.”

2. The painting process is always a beginning. As soon as the freshness evaporates (we are bored or lost or acquire interest in something else), stop. Do not think in terms of finishing. Picasso lectures eloquently on this. Finish is the death of our work because it means we are painting an expectation or “to be like” and that puts the brakes on painting to see and feel more deeply. Every beginning is a new prompt, a new point of departure. Begin everything. Finish nothing.

3. Ignore non-artist authorities. Juries, the grantors, the gallery, the direction from above are just so many fingers in our pie. All external measures are dangerous because they not only push us to performing, as opposed to creating, but their sense of worth takes over our own. This is precisely what Parisian artists fought against.

4. Get into a prolonged creative process. Have dozens of paintings in your studio that have been abandoned for one reason or another, left in various stages, unfinished but always complete as expressions of who you were at that moment. Work on several paintings simultaneously. You are not making shoes.

5. Furnish the world with your beauty, let the world see, touch and feel who you are. Scary I know. It is so much easier to hide within safe fortresses, the sources of praise and dignity that we can count on by pleasing our audience. This is the dreaded condition called style. We cannot be free to be who we are if we are not always risking being who we are in front of others.