ARTIST STATEMENT
I work abstractly, with collage and water-based media (watercolor and ink) and, recently, incorporating objects foraged on my daily walks through my neighborhood and along the Chicago lakefront. Change, chance, the daily interplay of encounters with plants, animals, water and weather generate the energy for beginning new work. Each painting begins with a singular move – a kinesthetic gesture, a response to shadows, an echo of the arch of a stem or the texture in the intestines of a fish washed up on the beach – and develops from there. In painting, as in dance, the elements of composition play an important role in expression, but my primary directive is to make a connection with the world around me, and somehow to express my reverence.
Often my images suggest plant and animal forms, and systems such as animal migration, mycelial networks, hydrology, geologic structures, though without direct representation of these processes and phenomena. I’m interested in science itself, how the earth miraculously goes about its business, but also how the earth’s business can metaphorically parallel human experiences and how color, line, texture and shape can evoke them.
ABOUT THE ARTIST
My path as a practicing artist has been circuitous… I was a painter as an undergraduate at the University of Colorado, where I also took my first dance class as a college senior. 30 years, dancing was my primary creative practice. I later earned an MFA in Performance from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago and there, upon graduation, was awarded the Smith Travelling Fellowship.
I improvised, choreographed, performed and taught movement as a solo artist and as a member of several companies, most notably, the Fluid Measure Performance Company. I worked most extensively as an improvisor utilizing the integration of movement and spoken word as well as cultivating a deep practice of Contact Improvisation. In 2002 , I trained and was certified as a high school visual art teacher while raising my son, who was born in 2001. From 2005-2018, I taught visual art at the Proviso Math and Science Academy and had to take a break from dedicated art-making. Upon retirement in 2018, I reinvigorated my painting practice, and have been pursuing it since 2019.
© Kathleen Maltese