Louise Kalin Artist Statement

M c G O W A N F I N E A R T
GALLERY CONSULTING FRAMING

  Corporate Art Consulting

  Exhibits

  Artists

  Framing and Conservation

  Blog

  Contact Us

  Home

Updated: 8.7.2007

LOUISE KALIN

I grew up in the Catskills when dairy farms divided the valleys and slopes of the mountains into geometries of color: hayfields, pastures with cows, and two hundred years of architecture- settlement s of stone & wood, from early Dutch stone dwellings to stoic white Greek Revival farmhouses. When I was nine my family moved to Cape Cod where we had always summered.

Although I drew and painted with my father who was a landscape painter and a believer in pure color- after graduating from Rhode Island School of Design, I continued printmaking and mixed media, which I'd learned from my mother- my art teacher in high school. I began translating landscape into geometric layers of color, reminiscent of American vernacular quilts and architecture. Borrowing from Amish quilts and the color studies of Josef Albers, I adapted a geometric format for color experimentation. These prints grew into mixed media pieces, with collage and markings, resembling textiles. The outside geometry of the squares sheltered the interior landscape- the more delicate, hand drawn images and fragile collages in the center of each piece. They followed each other, becoming triptychs and series.

A fellowship at the McDowell Colony afforded me a departure from the geomettric format; I started doing prints of "iron markings. I'd dreamt of my forearms and their likeness to naked wood. These became sculptures of peeled hickory sticks, vertically joined, resembling corn shafts, tied, with crows cawing from the tops. Others were nested, painted with graphite and midnight blue pigment, with wooden spheres within (gold leafed in the phases of the moon). The materials and subjects were so much a part of my childhood. The geometric prints were released from their outside boundaries, becoming asymmetrical and soft- edged.

The discipline of making order and arranging things, combined with new printing techniques and hand made papers, leads me forward. I've always wanted to incorporate drawing in my images, and I've just introduced to new solar plate-making techniques, which will allow me to begin that exploration.