Kathie Thomas

ARTIST STATEMENT:
Having spent the past twelve years focusing upon motherhood, in recent years I have been able to more intensely pursue my artistic passions. During the time away from the studio, I was able to reconsider what my artistic priorities, as well as explore other avenues of creativity, including experimenting with various forms of paint applications. Consequently, my attitude towards creativity and art transformed. I began to put more thought into what it meant to be an artist, who was also a mother, an Albertan, or to be someone immersed in a certain kind of landscape and lifestyle. Such a revelation has, of course, not only shifted my philosophical outlook, but also altered my formal application, such as the use of color, whereas I employ it less schematically, and more in search of a mood or emotional stand-in for whatever my subject might be. In addition, such an increasingly open approach to art making has allowed for more trial and error, and thus more humor and personality into my painting. This is something that in hindsight, I can see was lacking in my previous work.

As a result of all of this, it makes a great deal of sense to me that my latest painterly efforts have become increasingly organic in nature, as opposed to the more formal, and geometric emphasis that preoccupied my pursuits during and after graduate school. Obviously, having children gave me the time to rethink my concerns as a painter, reawakening the spontaneous approach I had with painting before entering formal studies, and better utilizing the benefits of such an education. Instead of believing that art had to be associated with some grand historical canon, I see now that my personal surroundings can contribute, and in a meaningful way, to what and how I paint. The landscape, my garden, our pets, all provide me with a copious amount of subject matter. Previously, my approach to a painting started with an idea, and predominantly I treated that idea as a concept with rules I believed I had to adhere to. In my latest painterly pursuits, I do begin with an idea, but now I allow serendipity to play an increasing role. Subsequently, the constant editing - scraping and adding - has changed my view of creating art, whereas the process of finding the painting is as important as the end result itself.

Bragg Creek, AB based. Nationality is Canadian/British