Kate Davis Caldwell
The small paintings that I have become utterly consumed in creating are inspired by polaroid snapshots of regional landscapes. Although the actual photographs are recent, it is the nostalgic and atmospheric quality of these polaroids that have served as reference points for this new body of work.
This series is a departure from what I have been pursuing in painting over the past few years. This is indeed the smallest I have ever worked, and the interpretation is quite literal. Although photographs have been an important source for my work for some time, they were always integrated through appropriation and reproduction to create new narratives. Here, they are a painted translation.
I highly recommend a visit to the gallery, Ms. Mayer has a wonderful group of artists- AK
http://www.mayerartconsultants.com/artist_davis
Kate Davis Caldwell- Artist Statement
"Rapture"
Rapture explores the elemental simplicity of water, land and sky and the beautiful instability that is inherent within. Nature's atmosphere of uncertainty and its capacity for overwhelming awe and fear present moods of premonition and quaking silence. Resulting in a convergence of familiarity and unease, these works are founded on themes of renewal, change, and evolution that are synonymous with nature itself.
Primarily created in charcoal, these recent works have adopted a monochromatic palette that merges the act of drawing with painting. Charcoal is applied by various means including brushes, rags and sponges, whereby paint is added when nearing completion, if at all. The abandonment of color is a departure from previous bodies of work that embraced a saturated palette. The act of drawing, and the tonalities that charcoal provides, create an organic sensibility reflected in the subject matter. What results is a sense of premonition that runs throughout the work. Compositions either present a surge to the edge of transition, or are found to be resting in a quiet aftermath.
Influential still are sources of photography and video that continue to be primary tools of documentation and investigation. Inspiration is derived from video footage, vintage photographs, and black and white photography. These modes of documentation enable a suspension of time in nature; wherein a breaking wave finds pause and a rushing sky falls silent.
Rapture presents an atmosphere of introspection. A consideration of nature that explores both its profound simplicity and acute complexity, which in context, is simultaneous.
- April 2008
From an older show of Kate’s work:
The paintings that comprise Kate Davis' new show of work, "Reclaim/Transpose," are works of visual literacy akin to the textual ones we term "books." Each one of Davis' paintings holds a fluttering set of visual pages, layers that we are encouraged to rifle through, and find connexion within. Her work is rich with layered imagery; iconographic figures who float above and beneath fields of pattern and shifting colours. Images appropriated from old photographs, cutout dolls, old wallpaper, history books and a wealth of other sources are placed within the frame of the canvas in a manner which both invites and resists the comparison to literary forms. These paintings offer the viewer several passages in and through them and like smudging one’s hot hand across old wallpaper we slip and slide through the layers of patterned colours on a very pleasurable journey.
In the use of colour Davis truly excels. While it is easy to become carried along by the richness of textures, patterning, and imagery it becomes clear that her understanding of colour is what weaves the layers tightly together. Strong colours in unexpected combinations ripple across the canvases creating areas where we are lifted forward and out of the painted space. Vibrant ochres edge against pea-greens and cadmium in a way which creates a shift in the tone as well as delineating a particular edge. These choices in colour form the balancing point of the exhibition. Certain colours appear in varying contexts in each work and in each one there is an awareness of exactly what that particular colour is doing in that position. For all the layering of pattern and object, Davis’ highly tuned sense of when the colour is “right” is key.
Kate Davis wants us to make connexions to the objects represented in the paintings. She gives us playful colours, blocky numbers, words that are spilled across the canvas like scrabble letters being pulled for use in the next game. Each painting, while complete in itself, leads inevitably to the rest. They share the idea of an artist commenting upon the female sensibility while not restricting the work to being “girlwork." Her paintings are guides; maps to follow to see what this world holds. They illuminate ideas rather than espouse traditions; in this way we are allowed to form our own connexions to the canvases.- Amy Kosh, Frenchtown, NJ 6/2/04