Kathryn Page Art

These collages are an homage to sewing patterns, those fragile, crinkled sheets of tissue paper that, as a girl, were essential my learning to sew. The compositions emerge from the abstracted lines of the patterns, superimposed over each other and then amplified by additional, hand drawn lines. The resulting images evoke various references - architectural drawings, musical notation, elaborate space vehicles – or pure abstraction. For me, they offer a moment of quiet balance and calm, coupled with a nostalgic nod toward childhood happiness.

In Spring 2022, I spent several days in the Sierra National Forest, south of Yosemite, hiking in mountainous areas burned by the Creek Fire–a vast landscape of charred trees. These pieces were my response to that experience.

These cut-paper collages and monotype prints weremeditationson interconnectedpathways-patterns that form networks threadedthrough the physical landscape as well aspatterns of belief or behaviorthat repeat overtime. They also served asprecursorstomyconcerns withpatterning and mapping imagery in theArchipelago(2023) andCartographyof the Imagination(2024) series.

This body of work goes beyond my previous investigations of mapping and wayfinding. By abstracting traced forms found in the natural world, I created ‘maps’ from photographic sources, ambiguous landscapes populated by complex, irregular forms. The scale is indeterminate, possibly microscopic or a view from space. Floating in a pixelated frame or reminiscent of deep night or oceanic expanse, the work could be a vast landscape; alternately, it may evoke biomorphic forms. Gauzy clouds of ink contrast with sharply delineated mark-making while attenuated clusters of organic shapes are bound by the paper tiles’ rectilinear grid.

Finding the pattern–to reveal and examine a fundamental continuity within a complex visual field-is a central concern of my practice. Through line, color, repetition, layering, juxtaposition ,and scale, I invite the viewer to explore the work both visually and physically, up close, at a distance and from various angles. The indeterminate scale and linear forms that are at times obscured, distorted or imprecisely realized, challenge the viewer to identify underlying pattern. My intention is to create a visual language that expresses the existence of an essential, underlying structure within a superficially random field. These contrasting forces–order and chaos–form a dynamic that is sometimes obvious, though often undetected or recognized only in hindsight. These works have been developed from abstractions of real-world images that I have assembled in to mixed media installations that combine printmaking, drawing and painting, with a second layer of acetate transparencies and offset drawings to add depth and movement. These elemental terrains shift and transform, in colors that reference the earth ,ancient caves, fire. The rectilinear provides balance to the expanse of organic shapes and forms.