Sources of Inspiration: Kathline Carr
The current exhibition in the main gallery ”Geographies of a Shifting World “ features core artists Vicki McKenna and Kathline Carr. The show is open through October 25th by appointment and during gallery hours Saturday and Sunday from 12–4. Below, exhibiting Core Artist Kathline Carr talks about her work and inspiration.
Kathline Carr
My sources for abstracted landforms come from all over. I am an avid hiker, and walker, and am fascinated by rock structures and the way light plays, is absorbed or repelled, on irregular surfaces. I also long to travel and often spend time looking at the mountainous geographies of places I’d like to go, places I am going to try to visit. Especially now, when we’ve been so constricted, these virtual wanderings seep into my work and dreams more and more often.
Three seasons out of the year, my husband and I work out in our carriage house. In front of my painting wall in the barn I can open the hay door and look out to the Greylock range, looming over the town in the near distance. We live in an old Victorian with tall ceilings so we use space in the house as well. My inside studio consists of two rooms upstairs, plus my intaglio press in what used to be a dining room. This summer, I spent most of the time painting in the barn, which feels a little like a treehouse. (Thanks, Briana Halpin, for the photo and the studio visit!) My studio is a workspace, and also a repository for ideas and inspiration. The edges around the work surfaces tend to accumulate work in progress, drawings, other artists’ work and miscellaneous items. (Postcard is of a painting by Bernard Chaet, called “First Light.”)
Earlier iterations of “Gentle Midnight.”
I use glazes and washes when I’m painting, scrapers and palette knives and rags. A lot of time in between layers looking, trying to allow what I’m envisioning to emerge. Sometimes this involves turning the painting upside-down or sideways, or painting parts out completely. The earliest version of “Gentle Midnight” (left) was completely irradicated, as I pushed the imagery further into abstraction.
The title, “Gentle Midnight,” is a line from a poem by Anne Waldman, called “Pressure, Holy City.” The rhythm and language of the poem are hypnotic, relentless, and references to consumerism, love, waste, cultural preoccupations and trappings, and the physical world are rotating around a few anchoring phrases, like “no escape” and “no way out.” It is as relevant today as it was at its time of creation (circa 1972), in its expression of overload, a kind of desperate overstimulation that relates to our present information age. Listening to Waldman reciting this poem (which I encourage you to listen to, here) reminds me of the way my thoughts race while I’m painting sometimes, especially if I’m stuck. I will often name paintings for music or recurring thoughts I was having during the painting process.
The last few lines of the poem read (the line breaks may be incorrectly attributed, as I have only the audio version as a reference):
no way out of midnight/black midnight/deep midnight/now coaxing midnight/gentle midnight/no escape.
Finally, there is surrender, and acceptance. The mysteries of the night, the planet, and the spirit--like creative process--can be terrifying…yet profound and full of joy.
Now that the weather is turning colder, I’m sewing together some of my drawings on cloth, and working on attaching a documentary poem-in-progress. Texts I’ve absorbed in thinking about the imagery for “Geographies of a Shifting World,” as well as the assembling of text for this work are Animate Earth: Science, Intuition and Gaia (Chelsea Green, 2006) by Stephen Harding; Continental Drift: From National Characters to Virtual Subjects (Chicago Press, 1999) by Emily Apter; Supple Science: A Robert Kocik Primer (On Contemporary Practice, 2013), edited by Michael Cross and Thom Donovan; and Elizabeth Kolbert’s The Sixth Extinction (Picador, 2016) and Field Notes from a Catastrophe (Bloomsbury, 2006)
