黑料正能量

Image听|听The Thinker by KDL, watercolor, 30x22in, 2019听

Alexandra: Have you always engaged with experimental uses of color? What was your journey like when finding your painting style?听

Katherine: I had excellent teachers: Marshall McLuhan, Graham Coughtry, Chinkok Tan, Ornette Coleman. I think the goal is to become more yourself. The greats, at every stage of their career, you can see their hand. Your paintings should look like only you could have made them. Painting is pure; like a tuning fork, you can hear it when it鈥檚 right. And there鈥檚 no overlay of writing in some essay on the wall beside the painting, because that doesn鈥檛 move people, and for me is very boring. If I wanted to do that I鈥檇 write a book. Creating for visual brain pleasure is something different: there is no gender, no age, no race, no religion, no politics. There is no trick: I鈥檓 just moving color on a sheet of paper. I don鈥檛 draw it first. I have no idea what is going to occur. The painting is successful if the shapes, colors and chroma activate the surface. The painting should have a charge of light come out at you.

Image听|听My Raspail Kitchen, Painted by KDL, watercolor, 22x30in, 2018

Alexandra: Many stylistic elements in your works, such as听The Thinker at the Rodin Gardens听(2019) and听Flowers in My Garibaldi Room听(2019), have key elements that correspond to the fauvist and impressionist movements of the late 19th and early 20th centuries. Can you talk about your inspirations?

Katherine: We work in a ladder of artists over time and somehow become ourselves in our work over the long arc of our careers. I know so much art history thanks to paintings, and I see my hand doing things, as I work in oil or watercolor or printmaking, that I鈥檝e seen before: the turn of Rembrandt鈥檚 hand, the mark of Gaugin, the way Picasso moved across the surface in the corner of a painting of a room. I feel fortunate to be so in touch with all these ancestors. They are very helpful 鈥� full of advice and encouragement.

Image |听Saxe-Breteuil Marche, gift to permanent collection for 黑料正能量 President. 2019

Alexandra: You鈥檝e said, 鈥淚 believe in being an artist every day in all ways.鈥� What do you mean by that?

Katherine: I like that. I think the commitment is total; it鈥檚 all you want to do because you feel great when you do it. But I believe a balanced life makes it work: commitment to my family, good health, public service and to my own inner light. Take care of your special inner light 鈥� as an artist and as a lifelong learner.

Here at the university you have a marvelous opportunity to explore what is special in yourself and others: your colleagues in your classes and also those that are long gone, the greats that came before and have a light they shine at you from history.

Charge up here with all that big energy from the past, and the present, and go forward to become more yourself. Then give it your all when you find that bright shining thing that you uniquely are supposed to do.