Kathy Moss

Biography

I am a formal painter, in that considerations of form: materials, format, size, scale, surface,
situation, drawing approach, composition, colors (or lack thereof) are the well from which I
draw. I make my own gesso; the renaissance chalk-and-oil ground. I make my own medium as
well.
The work has evolved over the last twenty one years into a personal iconography, a world of
glistening, minimal surfaces, with floating objects employed as signs. The paintings play with
bridging the two worlds of the conceptual and the representative; delicate, minimal amounts of
paint oozing and floating on the muscular chalk and oil surface while the subject matter exists in
space.
I use flowers as subject matter because I like the way they look in silhouette. The edges of things
are interesting to me, as boundaries, and binds, and negative space is clearly delineated. Flowers
and botanicals contain a psychology for me and in large scale represent heads, beats, landscapes.
They are beards: ambiguous, mysterious, symbolic and suggestive. My work addresses issues of
power, solipsism and hierarchies by presenting imaginary arrangements that would not occur in
the natural world. I am working in response to and partly inspired by both external and internal
chaos.
These are secret narratives; they reveal themselves in quiet contemplation.
Influenced by work as a print and surface designer, I have come to see repetition as a type of
abstract structure, one which infers less linear narrative even as a narrative is added by the denial
of it. Situation on the surface creates certain tension; the final image must hold the plane. The
floating, individuated motifs stand in isolation representing continuity and inferring content. I
regard each work as a situational haiku; ultimately I want the paintings to work formally, convey
their poetic, subtle narratives, and be beautiful.