Kathy Soles Studio Tour
It has been such a privilege to watch people who visit The Willard Gallery in person respond to paintings by Kathy Soles in real time. Hers are paintings that people will often circle back to for a second or third glimpse. There is a lot to see, a lot to experience. Different colors come alive in different light. Weeks will go by after a new Kathy Soles painting arrives and I will notice a detail, a texture, or a swath of color for the first time that I’d previously missed while unpacking, hanging, or photographing the painting.
I had the opportunity to visit Kathy in her studio in Milton, Massachusetts for these photos at the height of summer last year. As a professor of art at Emmanuel College in nearby Boston, Kathy was enjoying her summer outside of the classroom and all of her uninterrupted time in the studio.
Below, Kathy shares a statement on her work, her background, her process.
“I have been making images since childhood. Drawing for me is the key. The charge and the immediacy of a mark on a surface opens so many possibilities of expression. For me, drawing and painting have become inseparable.
Originally from the Boston area, I have also lived in Virginia, Maryland, and Washington, D.C. The opportunity to visit wonderful museums continued to feed my interest in art and helped to form my decision to make a life in the arts.”
“I began as a printmaker and drawing at Emmanuel College and The Maryland Institute. It was at The Maryland Institute that I decided to pursue painting instead of printmaking. Painting the landscape onsite became a passion. A summer at Skowhegan School of Painting and Sculpture and graduate school at American University solidified my interest in the landscape as a subject.
Artist residencies at the Millay Colony, Austerlitz NY, Paros, Greece, the Goetemann residency, Rocky Neck, MA, C-Scape Dune Shack, Provincetown and Cill Rialaig, Ballinskelligs, Ireland, have all offered dramatic landscapes to feed my love of the ocean and the natural world.”
“As my process has evolved, memory of place has become more significant in my work. While I continue to make work from life, the images serve as references. Color references from nature serve as a source for imagery. Initially a direct response to place and experience, my work develops into a dialog between dense accumulations of paint and drawing materials and open passages evoking light, air, land, and water. The accreted marks tell their own histories with a sense of urgency and vulnerability as they collide, dissipate, and reassemble. Natural forms, real and imagined, are explored. My love of drawing and mark-making remains.”
