Kathy's Artist Statement

The main media I work with are pen, pencil, oil paint, and clay. With all these media, my artworks are tied tightly to what I experience in my everyday life, whether it is something I see, or something that I create to be used daily.

Through pen and pencil sketches, I constantly search for natural compositions in my everyday surroundings. I am particularly drawn to moments where things, such as people, furniture, and objects overlap to create space. I also look for moments when the texture of an object shines through under a particular light source to capture the beauty of even something seemingly insignificant like a water bottle. I work as quickly and freely as possible to capture these compositions, gestures, and moments without making any preliminary drawings. They are like flashbacks of memories. I hope my audience can then find those beautiful moments in their surroundings as well.

My oil paintings are usually “born” from my sketches. I turn some of the flashbacks into paintings whenever I think initial drawings are not enough to capture the moment. While in sketches I emphasize the use of lines to make them feel lively and loose, in oil paintings I value shapes, planes, and the heavy texture of the paint itself to give my audience a more static moment to enjoy the atmosphere in the paintings. Hue, saturation, and value are used to direct the viewers’ eye through the picture plane to a person or an object in the composition so they are able to live part of my past memories across the time horizon.

I take a different approach to my ceramic works since these pieces are mostly functional but also something else sometimes. For example, I may use the surface of a jar as a canvas for drawing by carving lines on it. In general, I start with determining the form-types of a piece: mugs, jars, vases, and so forth. Then I experiment with ideas of composition, surface texture, color or pattern, and glazing so that the different elements in a pot start to respond to each other. I enjoy making a series of individual pieces that show the development of a particular idea. My goal is to make pots that are not only functional but also interesting to look at and interact with.