Artist Statement| kateyberry

Landscapes/Mindscapes (2020 - present)

I walk every day in the rural countryside of the Pecos Valley in New Mexico.

My paths take me deep into a valley, along a river's edge

and up to great heights on rocky cliffs.

I am surrounded by miles of outstretched wild land.

Moving through this landscape,

I experience the intimate and the vast

spaces

that inspire and feed my work.

My paintings are 'built' on panels in distinct phases.

On MDF panels I draw charcoal lines, paint color fields and carve, to establish mood, place, space, depth and movement.

Next, I coat the panels with melted raw beeswax.

Then, hundreds and thousands of single strand threads are embedded into the cooled wax.

The final step, the paintings outermost skin; its resonant voice, comes into being through the smoothing and burnishing of the hardened beeswax surface into a fine glow where light can dance.

Before the threads are embedded into the beeswax they are untwined and soaked in natural dye baths.

The time-consuming repetitive act of untwining hundreds of feet of thread for each painting puts me into a meditative state.

To untwine hundreds of feet of thread smoothly, my mind and hands must join together into consistent rhythmic movements.

The dye baths are made from things I consume daily or live around (i.e. spices, avocado, teas, wine and plants I find on walks).

Concocting nature-derived dye baths for my thread to soak in is alchemic, never fully predictable, and reminiscent of how prehistoric peoples made Art tens of thousands of years ago when they transformed natural materials into artistic mediums.

The untwining and dying processes were purposefully developed to create a focused state of mind,

a physical intimacy with my materials, and a connection to the beginnings of human art-making.

The process of embedding the threads is all consuming and very intimate.

As I press each individual thread into the wax they reveal their unique form. The threads contract, expand, and sometimes break; they are each unique and beautiful. I love not knowing exactly what they will do, or be, until I push them fully into the wax.

I facilitate the materials to find their final form and 'become'.

The colors, rhythmic lines, nature based materials and textured surfaces of my work are meant to express and share satiating places and experiences.

On past work:

Cocoons (2019)

I made cocoons from one continuous wax-coated thread. These cocoons are meant to hold, conjure, and embody the idea of Metamorphosis. Metamorphosis = a change of the form or nature of a thing or person into a completely different one, by nature or supernatural means. Metamorphosis is the epitome of powerful life change. I made these cocoons for a year and the making of them eventually led to the paintings I started to make in 2020 and still make now.

Cubes (2014 - 2019)

I made 6" empty wood Cubes that I filled with hand-made ceramic objects, mirrors, and photographs with a single glass-enclosed viewing portal. These cubes held spaces that only the eye and mind could access and that only one person at a time could view, reinforcing the intimacy and non-physicality of seeing. Inside the cube, on its interior walls, I surrounded my ceramic objects with mirrors and photographs I took of them outside the box to address how we see: there is the immediate seeing of the object itself, the seeing through reflection in mirror image, and seeing the object in the past in photographs. This work was my way of addressing and clarifying the many ways we see and hold objects in our mind's eye.

Collaborations with insects, time, and weather (2011 - 2013)

While walking in the New Mexican mountains, deserts, and river beds

I collect decaying pieces of wood.
I am struck by how they have been dramatically re-shaped by insects, time

and weather.

Their bodies reveal their histories.

Collaboration begins when I thoroughly gut each piece of its soft rot and reveal

the hard form; its core.

This is a process of discovery because I cannot predict what will be uncovered.

I then scrape, sand, and smooth each piece and surround them in earth-based mediums: clay, wax, and metal leaf.

The process feels deeply ceremonial and ritualistic...

from the selecting...to the gutting...to the surface working...to the re-dressing...

to the mounting on the wall or placement on a pedestal...

subject and I go through a transformation.

Portraits of the Microscopic (2006 - 2013)

Fascinated with what the naked eye cannot see I did portraits of microscopic and astronomic systems using gold leaf and plaster. Overlaying gold leaf on top of the plaster and carving out the images felt very intimate and precise as the subject matter seemed to ask of me. Gold leaf lending its transcendent, light-reflecting, quality to these subjects allowed these life systems to glow.