About Kathryn Field
For the past 30 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 tons. I have primarily worked in steel and bronze. For the past 15 years most of the sculptures I created were commissions for public spaces or private collectors. The time line for projects spanned over many months and for some over several years. They required teamwork and very specialized machinery.
In 1999 I began to investigate watercolor 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 and became 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. It fascinated me because like bronze casting, it moved from liquid to solid, with the possibility of carving and shaping the surface after it was complete. The power and brilliance of color became ever more important in my work, however encaustic painting was limited me to working indoors near a power source and I craved to work outside again. So after a short time I started working in oils.
Like the sculpture, my paintings range in size from intimate small works to five or six foot canvases. They document land formations observed from the ground and the air, moving across the quiet ponds and lakes of New Hampshire to the vast flowing rivers and canyons of New Mexico and Colorado then circling back to explore the rocky coast of Maine and Cape Cod.
After painting for several years I sought a way to merge my fascination with form and surface that I explored in sculpture. I started to paint on aluminum, steel and stainless steel. The luminous surface gave the study of land formations greater depth and tonal variation. Now some of the painted landscapes in oil move across the flowing surface of laser-cut stainless-steel plates instead of the traditional canvas. I have created hanging panels that invite the viewer to walk around and view the changing images on each side of the painted sculptures. In the work titled "Fish" the bodies of Coe appear to move back and forth across the surface of the panel creating a sense of motion.
The process of creating these new works begins with drawings, simplifying landscapes and figurative studies into bold positive and negative patterns. Then I work with an engineer to translate the drawings into a CAD program that can be cut on a laser cutting bed. Once the plates are l cut, I bend and shape the waste materials. These shapes are then welded into new locations onto the panels creating an undulating three-dimensional surface. Once the blank metal canvas has been created, the painting begins.
I paint to capture the intense beauty of the natural landscape. It is the act of losing one’s sense of self within the larger natural landscape that I seek. It is then that painting becomes a spiritual resting place. I spend as much time as I can inhabiting the landscapes I paint. The act of observing the natural world allows me to move away from human emotion and become connected with something greater than the individual self. The physical process of mark making and brush stroke transforms emotion into a visual language.
I draw the viewer into the abstract space of color, texture and form where it is not possible to understand the images at a glance but rather one is forced to step away and take in the mood first and then begin to explore the subtly of pattern, surface and spatial divisions.
In 1999 I began to investigate watercolor 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 and became 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. It fascinated me because like bronze casting, it moved from liquid to solid, with the possibility of carving and shaping the surface after it was complete. The power and brilliance of color became ever more important in my work, however encaustic painting was limited me to working indoors near a power source and I craved to work outside again. So after a short time I started working in oils.
Like the sculpture, my paintings range in size from intimate small works to five or six foot canvases. They document land formations observed from the ground and the air, moving across the quiet ponds and lakes of New Hampshire to the vast flowing rivers and canyons of New Mexico and Colorado then circling back to explore the rocky coast of Maine and Cape Cod.
After painting for several years I sought a way to merge my fascination with form and surface that I explored in sculpture. I started to paint on aluminum, steel and stainless steel. The luminous surface gave the study of land formations greater depth and tonal variation. Now some of the painted landscapes in oil move across the flowing surface of laser-cut stainless-steel plates instead of the traditional canvas. I have created hanging panels that invite the viewer to walk around and view the changing images on each side of the painted sculptures. In the work titled "Fish" the bodies of Coe appear to move back and forth across the surface of the panel creating a sense of motion.
The process of creating these new works begins with drawings, simplifying landscapes and figurative studies into bold positive and negative patterns. Then I work with an engineer to translate the drawings into a CAD program that can be cut on a laser cutting bed. Once the plates are l cut, I bend and shape the waste materials. These shapes are then welded into new locations onto the panels creating an undulating three-dimensional surface. Once the blank metal canvas has been created, the painting begins.
I paint to capture the intense beauty of the natural landscape. It is the act of losing one’s sense of self within the larger natural landscape that I seek. It is then that painting becomes a spiritual resting place. I spend as much time as I can inhabiting the landscapes I paint. The act of observing the natural world allows me to move away from human emotion and become connected with something greater than the individual self. The physical process of mark making and brush stroke transforms emotion into a visual language.
I draw the viewer into the abstract space of color, texture and form where it is not possible to understand the images at a glance but rather one is forced to step away and take in the mood first and then begin to explore the subtly of pattern, surface and spatial divisions.