KAT STEVENSTalk amongst Yourselves
Say something about your work, just a few paragraphs. What inspires you, what is the meaning? Conversations. Common ground. Uncommon ground. Inspired by how nothing is chance and all is created. When we encounter others, sometimes just a reassuring glance is a whole conversation and is enough to say that they do exist.
That glance…there is a process to my art that starts in the abstract. Living on an island will teach you not to waste paint. So, as I finish one painting with paint and medium left on my stand, I grab a new and pretty white substrate and smash my palette into it, or sometimes I use my hands, or a textured item, or a cloth. I will close my eyes and pretend I am a child fingerpainting, maybe I will hum a tune. I begin to build a story in color. No discernable shapes yet but, in my imagination, it comes up like stage lighting. It could be any color or all the colors. Then as the frenzy to contain or isolate something as the mash up subsides, I clean the edges, or don’t and I let it rest. Propped against the wall, like a window to a new world, like an empty theatre stage, like an empty dollhouse and a box of tiny furniture, a story in waiting. There I exist.
That conversation…I have seen how there is a unique conversation others have with my works. Something glances out at someone and sees their heart, their spirit, and continues the conversation. The ideas that come to me, the images that jump out of the smears and drips have made me both laugh and cry, but mostly tears of joy, mixed with paint on my cheeks, usually blue. You and your inner child are welcome to run with your imagination in my world. May you be joyful, growing, and free.
The message…look at creation through the eyes of a child, see with the eyes of imagination, stir the sub-conscious memories, let the colors blend into a beautiful backdrop, where you can see the story unfold the way you wrote it.