Kathryn Wiley

Artist's statement:

I started drawing and painting as a young woman in Paris a number of years ago, and haven't stopped since. My focus for many years was the landscape in oils, always painted on location. The November 2007 Foundry Gallery show "Transition" includes a number of landscapes of the Potomac River, the Chesapeake Bay, and the Delaware shore, as well as some works done on a recent trip to the Maine coast. A long- time goal has been to abstract the landscape, which I thought could happen organically, as a part of the development and evolution of the work. That wasn't happening, so in 2006 I started studying abstract painting, and found that colorful new compositions seemed to rise remixed from the stored images of a lifetime in a largely intuitive way. One series of the abstract paintings in the "Transition" show have a circular motif, in which the viewer seems to be looking through an obstructed lens at a bright, or ominous, scene or future beyond. Despite calling this show a transition from representational to abstract painting, I plan to continue working in both idioms.

Told he was approaching pure abstraction in his "Ocean Park" series, Richard Diebenkorn responded that he had no idea what he was doing. I feel something like that working in the abstract, and while I certainly don't mean to compare my work with Diebenkorn's, I was happy to learn that an artist of his stature had a feeling about his work similar to mine about my work. It's a journey with an unknowable destination, and I look forward to its continuing.

I am grateful to a number of teachers who have helped me, and continue to help me, along the way: in New York City, Marcie Rosenblatt; at the Yellow Barn in Bethesda, both Walt Bartmans, and Helen Corning; at the Torpedo Factory in Alexandria, Rick Weaver and Jim Burford. I've had the opportunity to develop and refine approach and technique in a number of workshops with noted American artists, including John Budicin in New Mexico; Ralph Oberg in Arizona; Charles Sovek in Maine; and Eric Aho in Italy.

I work both on location and in my studio in Bethesda, MD, and can be reached through the gallery, www.foundrygallery.org, or at kathypaints@comcast.net.