Artist Statement
Kathryn Arnold

Kathryn Arnold (United States) is an artist working  primarily with painting. By applying abstraction, Arnold formalizes the coincidental and emphasizes the conscious process of composition that is behind the seemingly random works. Her work externalizes private processes of thought, highly subjective and unfiltered references to dream worlds.  Her work urges us to renegotiate painting as being part of a reactive medium.

Arnold’s paintings feature coincidental, accidental and unexpected connections which make it possible to revise and complement art history. Combining unrelated aspects lead to surprising analogies. By experimenting with aleatoric processes, she creates intense personal moments masterfully created  through  rules and omissions, acceptance and refusal, luring the viewer  into an internally comprehensible narrative through spaces, fields of color and interpretive markings.  Space becomes intuitive aesthetic power.

Looking at these works, as a non-literal analogy, is a bit like looking at Google Earth, a satellite vision of our human life, environment and  experience. Walk up close to one of these paintings – very close.  The physical experience is a defining moment. Art critic Dewitt Cheng refers to them as “…ambiguously horizonless, scaleless vistas…”.  These vistas capture deep visceral experiences – one imagines the human touch, kinetic sensation, chaotic energy – a building, a destruction, a complex, bewildering space – and, at the same time, warmth.

Kathryn Arnold’s  works typically do not reference recognizable form. The results are deconstructed to the extent that meaning is shifted and possible interpretation becomes multifaceted. By rejecting  objective truth and narratives, she creates a unique situation in which the viewer is confronted with the conditioning of his/her own perception and has to reconsider predisposed positioning.

What Kathryn Arnold’s paintings look like:
The colors in Arnold’s paintings are variously jewel-like or subtly muted; the paint’s texture varies: drawing the viewer in as a crescendo builds and then diminishes. In Kathryn Arnold’s own words, ” I allow for intense optical mixing as the layers build up on each other with the translucent effects integrating both on canvas and in the eye. I build up the surfaces with marks.  As I work, I notice a sense of personality and emotive nature developing and pursue it. Poetic  gestures reveal the diaphanous character of thoughts and associations (processes of mind) in substantial and solid form..” 

Selected Critics:

• Raphael Rubenstein when writing on Kathryn’s work stated ” From Monet to Bonnard to Joan Mitchell, one of modern art’s most central traditions has been the color-rich painting that departs from the experience of landscape to travel the path to abstraction. Kathryn Arnold is clearly a vigorous inheritor of this tradition.”

• Dewitt Cheng states about Kathryn Arnold’s works  ” These field paintings oscillate between records of time passed creating such dense interweavings - … her profusely patterned surfaces, cross-hatching set free from representation, ask the engaged viewer to bring into focus the layers of visual cues and create totality from parts…”

Kathryn Arnold currently works in San Francisco.

PUBLIC COLLECTIONS:

Orchard Commercial, Santa Clara, CA

Metropolitan Transportation Commission and Bay Area Toll Authority MTC, San Francisco, CA

GoalbookApp Inc, San Mateo, CA

Menlo Ventures, Menlo Park, CA.

Ron Collins, Board Member of Marin MOCA

Thompson and Mitchell, Attorneys at Law, St. Louis, MO

Corporate Skills International, Kansas City, MO

School of Fine Arts, Dept. of Art and Design, University of Kansas, Lawrence KS

Bryan Cave Law Firm, St. Louis, MO

American Kenpo Karate Academy, Lenexa, KS

Topeka Public Library Collection, Topeka, KS

Ramada, Chicago area, IL

McDonall-Douglass Corporate Collection, St. Louis, MO

United Missouri Bank Collection, Oklahoma City, OK

University of Minnesota, Morris

American Century, public collection, Kansas City, MO.

Alpine Bank, Rockford, IL

Eisco Technology, Lincolnshire, IL

Frito-Lay Corporation, San Jose, CA

CSU Stanislaus, University Art Gallery Public Collection, Turlock, CA

University of Kansas, Fine Arts Department, Lawrence, KS.

Pequot Capital Management, Inc., San Francisco, CA

Seyfarth, Shaw, Fairweather and Geraldson, Attorneys at Law,  Chicago, IL.

Heartland Spine & Specialty Hospital, Kansas City.

Kirkwood and Ellis, Attorneys at Law, San Francisco, CA

New Corporate Location, name unknown at this time, Chicago, IL

Allergan Corporation, Irvine, CA

Corporate Collection, 100 First Street Art Collection, (Cushman Wakefield ), San Francisco, CA

Novartis Corporation, East Coast, United States.

Pieces are also included in numerous private collections throughout the United States.