ARTIST STATEMENT

INDOMINABLE

Abdominal ( unclean, detestable, causing moral revulsion )
Indomitable (impossible to subdue or defeat)

When tracking the journey, I took to obtaining my MFA it was a road of 27 years
that began in one of the lowest parts of my life. My world was in turmoil and art
was how I dealt with it. Art was how I survived it. It was friends that loved me
and encouraged me to release that darkness, hold onto what was important and
allowed me to dream again. Looking to women in history and specifically women
artists showed me how to mesh that ache and the strength it created that
brought me to CGU in January of 2018. My paintings have been able to track that transition of turning one’s feelings of being abominable to being indominable. (A colloquial wikidictionary version of the word.)

This process started within my practice and examining portraits with eyes that love art history. I am fascinated with life giving images that have withstood the test of time and figuring how to make work, specifically paintings, that go beyond the images that bombard us in daily life. I picked women for this body of work who know that indominability and have affected me in such a way. My paintings hold on to the likenesses of individuals but more than that they try to unpack the essence of their being that is not primarily visual though they live in the visual realm, they aspire to touch the invisible.

There is a life force that is within them, within us all, it’s worth taking time to look close enough to find it. It is my portraits imperfections that perfect them. Just as holding onto the indomitable and accepting those imperfections that can be held up to us as flaws can be transformative to make us indominable. It has been my pleasure to show you what I have discovered. I may have taken me nearly three decades to get here but it’s just the beginning.

Thank you,

Kathleen Fox