ARTIST STATEMENTS
Storyteller (on the occasion of Russo’s 2023 solo exhibition)
Time is the storyteller’s medium. It can be manipulated, drawn out, exploited - all depending on the artist’s narrative. As both an artist and a writer, time and its parameters are the framework, inherent in everything I make. My abstract narrative-based artworks are appropriated from existing art historical themes, as well as patterns and architecture, then re-channeled through a feminist lens. The works in Storyteller bring together three aspects of my work: painting, stitching and drawing.
The Male Gaze series uses palettes from pre-existing and well-known paintings that share a familiar motif from art history. Read from left to right, row by row, each painting of twenty ovals is a colorists journey through five hundred years (16th century to the 21st) of art history on a specific theme. By matching the palette used in the original painting, each individual oval represents a painting by a deceased male artist. I consider the oval to be his portrait. Themes include: Men Spying on Women Bathing, Men Staring at Women From Behind, Men Watching Women Working, Men Observe Women Sewing, Men Contemplate Women Reading, and Men Equate Flowers with Femininity.
When I’m stitching, I am influenced by Rozsika Parker’s book, The Subversive Stitch, which examines how needlework was used to tell stories and pass time through the centuries. More than any other art form, needlework is defined by the amount of time it takes to complete the work. Though often intricate and meticulous, stitching is also repetitive, laborious and even painful. In The Subversive Stitch, Parker asserts the act of stitching is subversive, giving women the time to think, plan and even plot. Time spent with a needle and thread in my hand is no different. Once I’ve worked out a pattern and the needle is passing in and out of the paper, I’m suddenly plotting and planning, scheming and subverting. The works themselves allude to this.
Inherent in all of the stitch work is a sense of anticipation: a book before it is cracked, a still room, an audience waiting for what’s to come. The Novellas, inspired by traditional book cover design, nod to the plotting and planning of their maker. In the Homestead, Rooms, and Corners series, I’m building sets, floorboard by floorboard, brick by brick, conveying a sense of solid structure, while also imparting the softness of needlework. Equally, I’m interested in the tension of known gender roles present in the work. Brick walls and parquet floors which are traditionally laid by men are, here, stitched by a woman. Agnes’ Room, Eva’s Room and Louise’s Room, inspired by the works of Agnes Martin, Eva Hesse and Louise Bourgeois, are the start of a new series of work, dedicated to female artists who had a subversive relationship with pattern, repetition, domesticity and obsession.
Kate Russo, 2023
STITCH WORK
I consider the grid a ready-made environment. My work tests the limits of what can live within it.
With the grid as a backdrop, these purposely time-consuming stitched drawing are explorations into the role of color relationships and repetitive mark-making in how we understand place, personality and memory.
This body of work began with the Document Series, a group of six drawings made of complimentary colored threads. With the subtle and relentless stitching, I’m conveying my nervous energy of time passing, particularly because the paper must be punctured with a needle before the stitch can happen. This also emphasized the relationship between soft thread and the more brittle paper.
When I’m stitching, I’m working with a narrative and feminist set of objectives. I am influenced by Rozsika Parker’s book, The Subversive Stitch which examines how needlework was used to tell stories and pass time through the centuries. More than any other art form, needlework is defined by the amount of time it takes to complete the work. Though often intricate and meticulous, stitching is also repetitive. In The Subversive Stitch, Parker eludes to the act of stitching being a means for women to think, plan, even plot. That stitch work can be construed as equally submissive and subversive depending on how you look at it is a tension I enjoy.
Curtains
The Curtains Series also relates to my ongoing series of pencil drawings involving stage design, The Stage Series. In this series, the thread is used to evoke the feeling of fabric stage curtains.
For this series, the inspiration comes from the stage etchings in Gregorio Lambranzi’s New and Curious School of Theatrical Dancing: The Classic Illustrated Treatise on Commedia dell’Arte Performance. I’m interested in theatrical design because of its relationship to storytelling. The stage, particularly the curtains, create an added sense of anticipation, the moment right before the story is about to begin.
DRAWINGS
Stages
In this series, I am experimenting with pattern’s ability to evoke a sense of place or atmosphere, despite its flatness. In particular, they reference stage design, which is itself often a series of flat elements intended to evoke a much grander environment. For the last two years my drawing focused on the ability to create a sense of personality and character, using only patterns. Similarly, this new series is trying to create a setting or sense of place through pattern.
PAINTINGS
Other People’s Palettes (Paintings of Artist Couples and Gatherings)
While other painters explore color as light or color as cosmetic, I’m interested in color as narrative. The following paintings are from a large, ongoing series I call “Other People’s Palettes.” In this body of oil paintings, I explore whether an artist’s essence can be captured in his or her palette, by using the palettes of well-known, deceased (one exception) artists. For this reason, I use the “oval” as a nod to portraiture. Alongside the effort to convey an artist’s character through color, I explore whether there is an instinctual difference in artists’ palettes over time and across gender, all adding to the narrative of color in art history and time.
Jasper and Robert, Wassily and Gabriele, Jackson and Lee, and Max and Dorothea are part of my Artist Couples Series, which use the palettes of two famous artists known to be in a relationship. For each oval, I use the palette of one painting by the artist. For each couple, I like to use two paintings that were made within a few years of each other and from the time the artists were known to be together. For example, in Jackson and Lee, I have used the palettes from, Jackson Pollock’s “Eyes in the Heat” and Lee Krasner’s “Noon,” both done in 1947. Each painting is intended to be like a snapshot of the two artists together at a particular moment in time. These paintings convey each artist not only through his or her palette, but also their palettes in relationship to each other.
Boissons avec Edgar, Edouard et Vincent, Déjeuner avec Claude et les deux Pierres and Edouard, Edgar et Mary à L’Opéra use the palettes of historical paintings to create fictional narratives and relationships between artists who painted in similar themes. For example, Boissons avec Edgar, Edouard et Vincent takes the palettes from three painting, which use bar scenes — one by Degas, one by Manet and one by Van Gogh — to create an imaginary narrative in which the three artists might have had drinks together. I consider myself as part of this narrative, the fourth guest, capturing the picture of the other three.
In both series, the use of the first names of the artist is purposeful and intended to suggest a familiarity or friendship between me and them.