About Kathryn Field |
603-284-6335 |
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For the past 26 years I have been actively engaged in making sculpture ranging in scale from the intimate size of 6 inches to large scale public sculpture weighing in the tons. I have primarily worked in steel and bronze. During the last ten years, most of the sculptures I created were either for public spaces or for private collectors. The time line for projects spanned over many months and for some over several years. They required team work and very specialized machinery. |
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In 1999 I began to investigate watercolor painting as a way to explore the more contemplative and quiet aspect of my creative life. It satisfied a need to work alone, quietly and to see immediate results. I painted outside teaching myself to become sensitive to the ever changing qualities of light and color on form. I worked in watercolors for five years and then was introduced to encaustic painting which then led to my interest in oil painting. |
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| I have been painting with oils for two years. The first year I painted on small canvases and did studies on paper while painting outside. But as my ideas developed and my skills increased, the scale of the canvas grew allowing the images to take on a stronger physical presence. My hope is to draw the viewer into the abstract space of color, texture and form. I do not want the viewer to understand the images in one glance but be forced to step away and take in the mood of the canvas first and then begin to enjoy the subtly of pattern, surface and spatial divisions. The fascination with the aerial views of the southwest comes from an appreciation of studying the patterns, forms and colors I observe when flying. The space that is created between the land and the sky becomes blurred and is dominated by a sense of mystery in its abstract pattern that is ever changing and developing before our eyes. I have been developing a series of new paintings that range in size from 4 to 8 feet across. |
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| Over the past six years I have been documenting landscapes from above every time I fly in an airplane. I use these photographs as the primary source of inspiration and information for watercolor, encaustic and oil paintings. The paintings started out in watercolors, on a small scale and focused on the detailed geometric patterns I observed from above. |
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This fascination with the landscape of New Mexico, photographing the land and aerial space of the southwest is not new. For the past two summers I have received funds from the school that I teach at to conduct research in photography and painting. The results were exhibited in spring 2006 at the Galletly Gallery, New Hampton School, New Hampshire. The work produced that summer and fall will be exhibited in the Edwards Art Gallery at Holderness School April of 2007. In addition to receiving research funding from my school last year I was very fortunate to be awarded a $15,000 research grant from the Kittredge Fund to continue my aerial documentation research. One of my greatest inspirations for painting the New Mexico landscape is Georgia O’Keefe. After I had painted a few aerial watercolors I discovered that she too had been fascinated with the aerial views of canyons and riverbeds. I saw my first view of these at the O’Keefe Museum in Santa Fe. |
