KATHERINE BLACKBURNE

72" x 96" oil on linen

This painting is pulled straight from a dream I had about finding a deserted aquatic center in the Bavarian Alps.

In using dream imagery I was looking for a way to circumvent the intellectual judging aspect of my decision processes and work in an arena that felt less divisive, more randomized. 

66" x 94" oil on canvas

I have been swimming laps in aquatic centers for many years. These spaces are deeply personal, part of my physical reality and function as point of interrogation for the external world.

78" x 108" oil on canvas

Municipal pools and aquatic centers used to function as social spheres. A place for social life to happen.

In my paintings the pools function as a type of proxy for a human figure, meaning there can be the trace of humans without painting an actual body.

52" x 52" oil on linen

For a while I have been thinking about the way in which luxury outdoor furniture advertising cultivates the notion of an ideal life but one where the presence of actual human bodies is strangely absent.

We then rifle through our mental archive of self images and throw something in. It occurs to me how often my self images do not represent an ideal life.

60" x 72" oil on linen

This piece began with the words 'die peacefully' in large hand rendered typeface. On the weekend that I made this work there had been a strange smell in the hall of my studio building. Something felt wrong about it. I continued to work on this painting, meticulously rendering the type and thinking about outdoor furniture as a representation of an ideal life. Late Sunday night I came out of my studio and there were police in the hallway. A studio neighbor had died suddenly the Friday before. There he'd lain, peacefully dead a few feet from me as I passed him each time in the hall. I felt my painting was both witness and eulogy. I painted over the words.

36" x 45" oil on canvas

In a world attuned to productivity and commodity where computational capacity constantly encroaches upon our definitions of human it’s heartening to remember that while we may wrestle with our ongoing techno-bewilderment spongy humans possess a sensitivity and intuition that still outstrips any device or software. Looking beyond the value judgment that human inferiorities might present our mistakes and circuitous choices define us as human. Within these ‘mistake realms’ we have the capacity to create new knowledge, new worlds. What is our human domain today? Is it simply our dream for a deeper inter-societal multicultural understanding and greater cognizance of our global interdependence? This desire points to the notion that for a goal to be deemed worthwhile it must collude with some intellectual, emotional, cultural agreement that is intrinsic to a particular people or epoch. This understanding between people sharply defines us from our computer descendants.

'Whitey' oil on canvas 24" x 30" 2017