Material Needs Past Exhibition Season 2022-2023

Kat O’Connor: Through a Dream

by |Published

/THROUGH A DREAM

Kat O'Connor

Material Needs 2022

September 8 - October 9, 2022


materials funded: oil paper, aluminum panels, birch panels, brushes, paint containers

/STATEMENT

For me, swimming is a metaphor for painting. The painter and the viewer enter the same space, but experience it in different ways. Some elements are sharp and specific. Some elements are abstracted and can be interpreted in multiple ways. Darkness might be water or the depths of space. Bits of light could be air bubbles or stars.

When swimming, I feel a momentary break from the world. Sounds are muted, light changes and bounces around in a way that doesn’t happen above water. I’m more aware of the environment around me pressing into my skin, buoyed along as if there is no gravity. Like flying in a dream, the smallest movement of an arm or leg propels me through space and time.

I am acutely aware of the privilege of swimming. The idea of utilizing the amount of water it takes to fill a swimming pool for recreation is something that I never take for granted. Water is a basic human requirement. It is both otherworldly and critical, and I strive to represent both the magic and the necessity of this element to human existence.

/ABOUT THE ARTIST

Kat O’Connor

Kat O’Connor earned a Bachelor of Arts in drawing with highest honors from Montana State University in 1990 and a Master of Fine Arts in painting from the University of Texas at San Antonio in 1995. O'Connor was awarded a Mass Cultural Council Fellowship for her drawings in 2018, and is honored to have received a Sam and Adele Golden Foundation for the Arts 2021 Residency. She received an Arts Worcester Material Needs Grant in 2017 and 2021. She is a Copley Master in the Copley Society of Art in Boston, Massachusetts, and her work is included in many private and corporate collections. O’Connor has exhibited her work nationwide, including three solo shows at regional museums, and won numerous awards. O’Connor has shared her love of art with students at Southwest Texas State University, The University of Texas at San Antonio, Worcester State University, Worcester Art Museum, DeCordova Museum and Sculpture Park, and Umbrella Center for the Arts in Concord, Massachusetts. She has led landscape painting workshops in Maine, New Hampshire, Cape Cod, New Mexico, Italy, and Greece.

@katopaints

katopaints.com

/EXHIBITED WORKS

H2O Series: 7 – 5

acrylic and oil on aluminum composite panel (ACP)

12″ x 12″

2022

Included in Fathom: The Art of Kat O’Connor at Worcester Art Museum




H2O Series: 16 (divided by) 8

acrylic and oil on aluminum composite panel (ACP)

12″ x 12″

2022

Included in Fathom: The Art of Kat O’Connor at Worcester Art Museum




H2O Series: 100 X .02

acrylic and oil on aluminum composite panel (ACP)

12″ x 12″

2022

Included in Fathom: The Art of Kat O’Connor at Worcester Art Museum




Girl Next Door

acrylic on PVC panel

24″ x 24″

2021

Included in Fathom: The Art of Kat O’Connor at Worcester Art Museum




The Assignation

acrylic on PVC panel

28.75″ x 25″

2021

This painting is currently on view in Made in Paint IX at the Sam & Adele Golden Gallery in New Berlin, New York. The gallery is currently closed to the public.




H2O Series: 1 + 1

acrylic and oil on aluminum composite panel (ACP)

12″ x 12″

2022

Included in Fathom: The Art of Kat O’Connor at Worcester Art Museum




H2O Series: 2 + 0

acrylic and oil on aluminum composite panel (ACP)

12″ x 12″

2022

Included in Fathom: The Art of Kat O’Connor at Worcester Art Museum




H2O Series: 2 X 1

acrylic and oil on aluminum composite panel (ACP)

12″ x 12″

2022

Included in Fathom: The Art of Kat O’Connor at Worcester Art Museum




Swimming the Jewel, #2

oil and acrylic on wood

9.5″ x 18.75″

2021

Typically, I photograph my subjects underwater, frequently looking up towards the sky. Light bends as it leaves the water, creating abstract swirls of color that I later paint in relation to the figure. Swimming in the crystal-clear water of the Aegean presented me with the opposite water distortions. I could look down through the water at the sand and rocks fifteen feet below me, stretched and altered by the waves moving above. Occasional flashes of blue-sky reflections were bounced back towards my eye, creating a plane of sky interacting with the jewel-like colors of the bottom of the ocean.




Through Light and Color

acrylic and oil on aluminum composite panel (ACP)

12″ x 12″

2021

This painting was created on an aluminum composite panel. The aluminum has an extremely smooth and accepting surface that allows the brush-mark to sit on the ground rather than being absorbed into it. With this piece I experimented with a variety of paint pigments to amplify the effect of incandescent light bouncing from the surface of the water at the same time that light from inside the pool was bouncing off the figure itself.




Through a Dream

oil on acrylic pour on PVC panel

10″ x 10″

2022

Through a Dream was created by pouring a number of carefully mixed acrylic colors onto a PVC Panel. The resulting surface has a delicate satin sheen and a complicated structure of value and color that interacts in a way that is similar to reflections and distortions seen underwater. The portrait was then painted in oil on top of that surface, integrating and contrasting the colors of the original pour. The resulting image has a dream-like quality that feels both cosmic and meditative.




Time Folds in on Itself

acrylic and oil on aluminum composite panel (ACP)

30″ x 22″

2022

This painting explores the idea of how a memory can be associated with a particular time in our lives. Once you recall that memory, other memories of that time surface and build one on top of the other, reflecting things in a slightly altered and perhaps distorted way. Some of those memories are anchored and specific, others flow and change with new perspective. This painting was created on an aluminum composite panel. The aluminum has an extremely smooth and accepting surface that allows the brush-mark to sit on the painting ground rather than being absorbed into it.




Stardust and Dreams

acrylic and oil on PVC panel

10″ x 20″

2022

Included in Fathom: The Art of Kat O’Connor at Worcester Art Museum




Aurora Borealis

acrylic and oil on PVC panel

22″ x 30″

2022

Included in Fathom: The Art of Kat O’Connor at Worcester Art Museum




You Look Like a Ripple in the Black but You Sound Like Love

acrylic and oil on aluminum composite panel (ACP)

24″ x 24″

2022

Included in Fathom: The Art of Kat O’Connor at Worcester Art Museum




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