Kathryn paints abstract, bold and, as she calls them herself, meditative landscapes.
In Autumn Breeze you may think you see a blood stained forest over a lake, the trees reflecting in the water and an undecided, muddy sky.
The forest line separates at two thirds, leaving room for a pale sun who’s reflection almost unnoticeable separates the lake in two zones of the same proportion.
A superficial look only sees 4 distinct zones in the composition.
The sun reflection is, unexpectedly, of the same color as the sky (or maybe the yellow patch in the forest opening is not the sun).
Here and there you can see unimportant tree trunks but what dominates the composition is their extraordinary flaming hot crowns, so read as if the color was used straight out of the tube, a sole hue which leads your eyes across the whole painting before you can see anything else.
In the bottom right, with no particular reason, you can see the sky reflection again.
The sky is in blueish green, very pale hues. The sky color is dry painted so you can clearly see the brown mask under it, creating a beautiful rugged texture.
Almost the same process creates the lake but here the pale blue only represents the sky reflection so, though presented in the same colors, the proportion between the brown and the cyan is actually reversed. The inversion creates a very nice familiarity, having a feeling of austerity, so welcome to balance the aggressive tree tops.
The great visual variety is largely due to great the pseudo-texture obtained by dry application of blue over brown.
If the sky was originally covered by clouds , the photographic details where replaced by these artificial details of the brush strokes that show a well studied negligence.
This remarcable painting strangely leaves me with a strong felling of sadness, calm and energy in the same time.
The red of the forest is probably responsible for one of the emotion and the eroded sky, his pale color are responsible for the others.
The rest of her paintings share some common elements defining her style.
I can see she often likes the texture effect of running paint freely flowing in different directions, smudging the colors, mixing the colors directly on the canvas.
In general, Kathryn is not afraid to experiment. I will leave you in the company of some of her work.
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You can see more on her website.
