I walked into Katherine Keltner’s studio
and was immediately confronted with plush/candy pinks and fleshy tones. Abstract
mixed media artworks with subtle forms that tested my imagination; I wondered
what they could be. Something
wrapped in plastic? Body Parts? Maps?
Katherine’s process begins from
photographs. She zooms in to the point of pixilation. She gets so close as to
almost get inside it. Freeing the final image from the confines of what it was
part of, she starts to play with what it is. She explores and refines existing
forms with knife cuts and paint strokes, as well as brings new forms into the
existing dialogue, I remarked there were forms in the new work that resembled
photographic references of shadows from tree leaves on the ground that
Katherine had hanging up in her studio for a tART studio visit I attended in
2008.
Camille, Katherine’s
daughter, who was also in pink, fluttered around a large table of inks, paper
works and a few snacks. The works on paper were free and decisive experiments,
sometimes using the photograph; other times just using the actual forms that
attracted her. Some I found profoundly interesting. We spoke about the
challenge artists face, getting the rawness of the studies and drawings into
the main work.
Finally, there were 5 new studies for paintings she was
going to realize in the next couple of months. One of these paintings formally
resembled the composition of the painting Yasmin Spiro was most attracted to in
my studio visit, so in going with this chain, that is what I picked. As Yasmin
had given me the option to show additional new work relating to her suggestion,
I suggested the same to Katherine.
