Artist Spotlight: Kate Maura
Kate Maura is an artist I truly fell in love with. Her work evokes the same emotions I have when at a ballet. Beautiful, flowing movement. Her use of colour, both heavily saturated and muted, combine to draw you in and balance in such a way as to be both harmonious and striking at once.
As a designer, I am always on the lookout for the perfect complement to a design. In some cases, the design starts with art. I have found that working with Kate has been an enchanting experience. It is imperative that we are always able to bring our clients works that are unique and work flawlessly within their spaces, yet retain and reflect their personalities.
Below is her artist statement. Find out more about Kate and her process below.
Have a terrific day,
XR
ARTIST STATEMENT
My work begins with immersive experiences within the natural world, and the motion of the butterfly as part of my visual language. These creatures are metaphors of transformation and crossing other worlds. When I am fully immersed in nature, using all of my senses, I feel a part of some mysterious beautiful world, grounded, fulfilled and transformed. The work is an expression of that experience. Plein air drawing, biology, philosophy, and poetry all play an integral part in the creation of my work, as I learn new things I am changed.
When we are immersed in nature things reveal themselves in different ways depending on what we need at that time in life, and my intention is to create abstracted works that allow this open space for contemplation and interpretation. You might begin to see different things as you look more closely or at another time. Overall, the imagery looks like a mysterious world, sometimes shapes could be recognizable like florals, wings, leaves, figures or maybe faces, as impressions have been made subconsciously while I am drawing. I allow myself the freedom to fully flow with the forms and not control things. Within each stage of the process, I keep myself open to whatever catches my attention and to explore it further. There is much experimentation within each step and an intuitive response.
After bringing my analogue drawings into the digital world, my visual language involves layering thinking about their movements, the colors are informed by the place, the flowers, greenery, sky, rocks, and I play with varying opacity to convey the ephemeral of these experiences, things feel like they are appearing or disappearing. Then I paint overtop with acrylics responding to the printed larger imagery that is now on canvas and not on my ipad. Once again with fresh eyes, having had some distance from the work, I see new connections in form, line and colour. The viewer can see the areas of paint and of printed archival inks and I like that the differences are noticeable, as a mixed media, it is a way to view how I was responding again to the work, my process a witness to visual transformation of early analogue drawings.
The variety of layering and how those layers interact with each other to create new form or colour is a unique challenge in the work. There are so many layers of drawings and forms. Why? It is not just about motion, this layering speaks to new ways of seeing through different lenses of knowledge, as well as our interconnectedness, and that we experience a whole new view of things. The work is like a puzzle. I enjoy finding the interactions between the layers that create different forms or colours. To be true to the creature the butterfly I also work in the round so that my works can be hung in any direction, adapting to its environment like nature.
The use of these different materials /tools connects more traditional ways of making (drawing and painting) which symbolize our history with more contemporary technology (digital). Synthesizing the two can give us a deeper understanding of ourselves, who we really are, and the world around us. Hence, I call my process synthesis original art.
There is tremendous beauty in transformation at some point, and so my imagery has a feeling of loveliness and lightness of being. I hope my works can allow the viewer to feel a rhythm that calls from within and a space for contemplation of self, where one can feel energized yet calm and grounded. It is how I feel when I am immersed in the natural world, and it is rejuvenating and vital.
