Artist Statements- present and archive

Artist statements have always been the bane of my existence- not because I don’t have an understanding of my work or what drives me to it, but because it feels pretentious putting it into words. My hope has always been that the work would speak for itself. I originally chose paint as a medium because it doesn’t require verbal exposition but in deference to common tradition over the years I have written artist statements. The one previously attached to my work is outdated now, but in revisiting it I find it valuable in understanding the evolutions of my process. So maybe it’s not such a foolish construct after all.

Writing the play Pretty Ugly Things gave me a medium where words are appropriate to express opinions about the process of painting- but in the mouth of a character- and for some reason that doesn’t feel as pretentious to me. Some of the character’s monologues are lifted from essays I wrote for my paintings. It’s interesting that I can find a level of comfort writing about art if it comes from a fictional character, but to claim those feelings as my own can be difficult. Yet another level of awareness of where the work comes from and my ability to access it. However, having the words in a play doesn’t serve those of you who are only seeing my visual work here. So for those of you who are not familiar with the theater I have written another more recent musing on my process.

Sometimes I write essays for a piece as I work on it. They are available by clicking on a painting.

Artist Statement 2012

I believe art is the presentation of thought, emotion and beauty or lack thereof in any medium that pleases the creator. My art pleases me, or not. It arrives when it choses. My heart is spayed out whether I intend it, my past dissected, my confusion unmasked and my intent obscured by the vomiting of subconscious flotsam and jetsom. I am just living through each day, and when I paint, the strokes on canvas unmask the subtext of those days. We are born alone, we die alone, but for now we are in it together. That’s what gets me going, those tendrils which connect me to others, linking me to the great chain of humanity and knowing that I am not alone, as I once believed. When I paint all the “other” comes out, the past feelings of impotency, the secrets, the unheard voice, the lack of emotion and deadness, the void of color. But then life/art intercedes and snippets of the next phase appear. The crack in the cage, the light that peeks in, hopeful and yet not daring to look, then more light and yet more secrets. Searching for others like myself. Seeking and feeling and then trying not to feel, compartmentalizing and then the work, more work. The painting spewing out the past with bits of the present clinging to it and changing and obscuring, creating a mélange of time and self all blurred together. My own paintings inform me and scare me, define me and enable me all at once. They show me the past and help lead me to what’s next.

I choose to avoid provocative images that have a knee jerk connotation. Instead I choose the female body. It’s familiar, we all know it on some level- be it as a woman, lover, child, mother, observer. As Americans we are fortunate to live in a world where women are seen, at least on the exterior. The image of the body is not foreign, or shocking. It is basic. The emotion, the image, the paint, is an extension of my intellect- and my guts. Me. I pour it out, I struggle to put what is inside on the outside. I use the work to clarify, to focus for myself, and perhaps for the viewer. And yet I struggle against that openness. I try to hide, to submerge, but when I paint and paint well, it emerges. I think that is what takes the work to the next level, beyond the concept, beyond the image. It goes into another place, an indefinable place where life and art merge together and something else happens. Somehow these things come into alignment and the thing lives all by itself, without me.

KM

Artist Statement Archives

As an artist I’ve evolved beyond this, but in revisiting this statement, I like how it describes the process.

Artist Statement 2007

My women are full of the complexities of life. They encompass the conundrum of who we are as a society, and who I am as an individual. I have drawn from the pain that was a part of my past, and the control that I have as an adult to create this work. I forge my work with the conviction that these things are not to be feared, but brought out into the light. My women beckon, they cajole, they challenge the viewer to engage in their stories. I used to think that I had unwittingly stumbled into my quixotic pursuit of art. But now I know that I am here for a reason. I have stories to tell, rants to rage, questions to ask, and these images are the vehicle to do it with.

I also write essays for each piece. I think of them as backstories. The work speaks to me as I paint it and we maintain a running dialogue. These essays come from this dialogue. The one excerpted below is one developed as a companion for a series of works, but applies to all the work as an underlying construct.

I was handed a gift when my chromosomal chain was forged. The ability to hold a brush and put down color and line that lives and breathes. Then life came along and gave me something to paint about.

KM

Excerpted from the essay: Chain. Tendril. Path.

Is it me, or is it all women? Without our spinning wheels and washboards and endless churning of butter are we then free to chun something else? Cheese, it’s primordial. It’s bacteria, it’s fermention, it’s milk, it’s women. I’m the Farmer in the Dell. The first painting is the farmer. The second is the wife. The wife takes a child and so on until the cheese stands along. I’m struggling to find the “stand alone”.

The paintings are a linked chain. They start out with one and a choice is made. The next link is formed and then another choice. The paintings start telling. But then a painting like Obedience School arrives. The link collapses and reverts and the girl is back, this time mouth agape, vulnerable and obedient. Waiting. Words surround her, but none touch her. She seems like a step back in time. But perhaps she is just a reminder of where the others spring from, and have evolved into. Maybe someone forgot to tell her that I’ve grown up.
The paintings are a linked chain. They start out with one and a choice is made. The next link is formed and then another choice. The paintings start telling. But then a painting like Obedience School arrives. The link collapses and reverts and the girl is back, this time mouth agape, vulnerable and obedient. Waiting. Words surround her, but none touch her. She seems like a step back in time. But perhaps she is just a reminder of where the others spring from, and have evolved into. Maybe someone forgot to tell her that I’ve grown up.

Some days I feel that I’m confused and without a clear vision of what it is that I’m pursuing. There are these moments when I see the train coming down the track so clearly, but just for an instant. Then it’s gone. Disappeared, and I can’t even see the track any more. There are days when I see myself, all stretched out in the future. It’s a future where I am seen and heard and alive again. Somebody gets it and sees, and I am free to talk and paint and breathe. Then it’s gone again, into a tunnel, but when it emerges I see that it’s heading for Little Nell who is tied to the tracks while Snidely Whiplash stands by twirling his moustache. Who will rescue her? Where are those wonderful strong women that I paint? The women with their hips cocked and thrust pelvises and their confident and dangerous eyes? Where are they with their big lips and listening ears? Where did they go, and why did they leave me with this girl? Why is she back and what the hell does she want from me now? Why has she not slunk off to the dragon’s cave and remained the bleached bones of the past? I slayed her dragon. He destroyed her first, but I went in later and revenged her. She is gone, but I felt like her bones were clean and white and without the vestige of decay. They were just bones. And now she’s back with her open mouth and her red flesh body and her silent looming figures and all her obedience. I don’t want her back. I want my red girls. I want my train wreck. I want my women with their oversized hands, and strong bodies. I want my proud and naked portrait. I want her to get back to the ledge outside of the cave and continue to bleach in the sun.

And then the girl grows up into a monster constructed from anxiety and pain. She has gnarled hands with broken knuckles and bloody bitten nails. Her bones, so brittle that she is afraid for the slightest wind. It will take her. It will break her. It will separate her from her last slim thread of sanity. Her eyes have lost none of their brightness, but instead of the bright gleam of curiosity and intelligence, there is the fire of madness. How did this creature stage a coup and leave only the veneer without anyone noticing? How is it that when people speak to her, they still see the lean brunette with glossy hair and tender skin? Do they not see the hag underneath?

However, a tendril of sanity reaches in and binds the hag. It silences her, and leads her to the brushes. It puts the brush in her hand and tells her to paint. Paint. Put the crazy on canvas. It’s time to put the hand grenade down. It’s time to let the monster from the box. It’s time to exorcize the hag, put her out, let her go. She was once the child of the bones and you let her grow up into this. Now the woman in you must fight, fight for the child, defeat the hag and let the tendril wrap and bind what must be vanquished. Let go of the badness and let beauty and strength fill the void.
You once bided, and then got out. Pity you stopped and rested before the vanquishing was through. The bones you thought were bleached and no longer dragon fodder regenerated enough flesh to tempt him back for another meal, tougher meat, but sometimes even dragons don’t care. Well, he can have the hag, but he can’t have me. I intend to finish the vanquishing this time.

I paint from those places. I paint when I’m the girl, or her bones. I paint when I am the confident adult, a wife and mother. I paint when I am straining to see the train. And I paint when I am the hag. I paint from the other side. My past is dissected, my confusion unmasked.

I always had to paint because of what was behind me. Then I began to think about painting forward. I realize that the work informs me. I think that I’m painting about what I know, but in reality it’s helping me unravel where I’ve been, and where I need to look next.

Kate Maracle

Artist Statement 2005

I am tired of being a painter. I am tired of making things that no one sees. That no one gets. I am tired of painting for the select few who see it and see me. I am tired of the pretension, the dialogue, the endless discussion about “what is art?”. It’s all art and none of it’s art. It’s just life, it’s just emotion, it’s just intellect. It’s just pain on ice and then more life. It’s getting the kids breakfast. It’s crying in the shower. It’s walking down the street and trying not to step in other people’s dog’s shit. I just am out of life. I am just out of art. I am out of steps dodging the crap. I just want to make waffles and pour syrup and avoid field trips to the Whitney where they tell 8 year olds that Oscar Blumner thought about the mountains resembling cannons when he painted them. I think that painters paint because they have to. At least the ones who aren’t conceptual. Don’t even get me started on conceptual. Yes, I get it and yes, I understand that is has a place of importance in the art world and yes, I get the need for bits of magazines cut out and arranged to represent fictional journals of Lebenese figments of someone’s imagination. Really, I do get it. I’m not being facetious. But it’s not the kind of art that I’m talking about. I paint. And I paint with more than my hands and intellect. I paint with my heart and soul. I paint with parts that I don’t know that I have. I paint with memories that I didn’t know existed. I paint with thoughts that cannot be put into words. I paint with longing so deep that it is beyond any word or cut of piece of magazine or video clip to ever attempt to make sense of. I paint with the energy of my ancestors that are part of my cellular being and with the emotions of the great grandmother that I never knew, the one who held me once when I was a newborn. I paint with the feelings of her hands upon my body. I paint with the damaging hand on my body. I paint with the imprint of what he did to me, and the force of the denial of that damage. I paint with the absence of a safety net. I paint with the joy of the births of Clay and Scarlett and the joy the wells throughout me when she lopes around the house dragging her knuckles on the floor because she is being Koko the gorilla. I fill with the joy of parenting her and the knowledge that I will give her the strength to make a path that will fulfill her, as I struggle to find mine. I paint about that path and the ongoing search and the failure that I have perpetuated over and over because of the fear. The fear that I have faced in my dreams and the fear that I have faced in my waking life. This fear has kept me from putting out the art. Putting out the painting. Putting it in the places where it might be seen, as I did not want to be seen. Well, it’s time for the fear to end, and the fear to be seen and the joy to be seen. For me to be seem. You know what, this absolutely terrifies me. And I am afraid that it will scare the pants off of you.

Kate Maracle