Studio Ghosts: When you're in the studio painting, there are a lot of people in there with you - your teachers, friends, painters from history, critics... and one by one if you're really painting, they walk out. And if you're really painting YOU walk out. (Philip Guston)
Artist's Statement
I find myself swimming around in a deep undercurrent of emotions. Subconscious worlds break through the vain outer surface in visceral, unapologetic misshapen forms, brazen drips and vibrant stains all alluding to bones and entrails. The work is rooted in raw fecundity. Biomorphic images pour forth and float in translucent layers. Deep below our epidermis exists a flourishing world of fluids, organs, muscle, mucous, bones and blood. This is where my sensual beauty resides. It’s not pretty nor is it sentimental. These works are as much about ugly mishaps as they are about the happy accidents in life.
Hand-stitching and embroidered threads serve as sincere tender, caring gestures, which are handled in a somewhat awkward, absurd and even humorous manner. It’s my loving attempt to embrace, heal, care for, celebrate and elevate precious emotions linked to bodily organs that, while not so outwardly pretty or socially acceptable for public viewing, are truly things of beauty (take for example: lungs, intestines, arteries, bones, sex organs, sinuses, gums, and everything else from head to toenails). My work is picking up, stitching, seaming, basting, binding, cutting, tearing apart, hemming, mending, pouring, staining, and absorbing little pieces of my subconscious dream world. As if unveiled from the inside out, remnants of desire, longing, loss, disappointment, destruction, convalescence, and restoration comprise these complex layers of fabric, paper and photographs.
The final product is, ostensibly, sensual and so is the process of creating my work. I must dance with my work. It’s improvisational contact or perhaps some sort of oddly choreographed Tango. I physically move pieces around the studio as if they were my dancers and they in turn move me in new directions. We are constantly checking each other out to see who will take the lead. I find myself floating and dipping into intangible moments when sacred and profane worlds collide. It’s a repulsive and alluring dance of sex, birth, death and all the juicy stuff in-between. My work revels and wallows in the liquidity and porosity of life. Fluidity and decay continue to draw me in for a closer look. My stains and stitches go hand-in-hand together, reminding me to soak it all in.
I find myself swimming around in a deep undercurrent of emotions. Subconscious worlds break through the vain outer surface in visceral, unapologetic misshapen forms, brazen drips and vibrant stains all alluding to bones and entrails. The work is rooted in raw fecundity. Biomorphic images pour forth and float in translucent layers. Deep below our epidermis exists a flourishing world of fluids, organs, muscle, mucous, bones and blood. This is where my sensual beauty resides. It’s not pretty nor is it sentimental. These works are as much about ugly mishaps as they are about the happy accidents in life.
Hand-stitching and embroidered threads serve as sincere tender, caring gestures, which are handled in a somewhat awkward, absurd and even humorous manner. It’s my loving attempt to embrace, heal, care for, celebrate and elevate precious emotions linked to bodily organs that, while not so outwardly pretty or socially acceptable for public viewing, are truly things of beauty (take for example: lungs, intestines, arteries, bones, sex organs, sinuses, gums, and everything else from head to toenails). My work is picking up, stitching, seaming, basting, binding, cutting, tearing apart, hemming, mending, pouring, staining, and absorbing little pieces of my subconscious dream world. As if unveiled from the inside out, remnants of desire, longing, loss, disappointment, destruction, convalescence, and restoration comprise these complex layers of fabric, paper and photographs.
The final product is, ostensibly, sensual and so is the process of creating my work. I must dance with my work. It’s improvisational contact or perhaps some sort of oddly choreographed Tango. I physically move pieces around the studio as if they were my dancers and they in turn move me in new directions. We are constantly checking each other out to see who will take the lead. I find myself floating and dipping into intangible moments when sacred and profane worlds collide. It’s a repulsive and alluring dance of sex, birth, death and all the juicy stuff in-between. My work revels and wallows in the liquidity and porosity of life. Fluidity and decay continue to draw me in for a closer look. My stains and stitches go hand-in-hand together, reminding me to soak it all in.
For the Birds from Catherine Altice on Vimeo.
Believe it or not, I can actually draw.
Jean-Michel Basquiat
If you do not tell the truth about yourself you cannot tell it about other people.
Virginia Woolf
No one can make you feel inferior without your consent.
You must do the things you think you cannot do.
Eleanor Roosevelt
Forrest Gump:
That day, for no particular reason, I decided to go for a little run.
So I ran to the end of the road. And when I got there, I thought maybe I'd run to the end of town. And when I got there, I thought maybe I'd just run across Greenbow County. And I figured, since I run this far, maybe I'd just run across the great state of Alabama. And that's what I did. I ran clear across Alabama.
For no particular reason I just kept on going.
I ran clear to the ocean. And when I got there, I figured, since I'd gone this far, I might as well turn around, just keep on going.
When I got to another ocean, I figured, since I'd gone this far, I might as well just turn back, keep right on going."
If you want to know what you'll look like in ten years,
look in the mirror after you've run a marathon.
- Jeff Scaff
Jean-Michel Basquiat
If you do not tell the truth about yourself you cannot tell it about other people.
Virginia Woolf
No one can make you feel inferior without your consent.
You must do the things you think you cannot do.
Eleanor Roosevelt
Forrest Gump:
That day, for no particular reason, I decided to go for a little run.
So I ran to the end of the road. And when I got there, I thought maybe I'd run to the end of town. And when I got there, I thought maybe I'd just run across Greenbow County. And I figured, since I run this far, maybe I'd just run across the great state of Alabama. And that's what I did. I ran clear across Alabama.
For no particular reason I just kept on going.
I ran clear to the ocean. And when I got there, I figured, since I'd gone this far, I might as well turn around, just keep on going.
When I got to another ocean, I figured, since I'd gone this far, I might as well just turn back, keep right on going."
If you want to know what you'll look like in ten years,
look in the mirror after you've run a marathon.
- Jeff Scaff
