My manifesto; in fact, a womanifesto

Catherine Hicks

Fine Artist,

Blogger

Bio and Artist's Statement

Catherine Hicks has done art all of her life.

Drawing, coloring, collaging, weaving, embroidery, needlepoint, knitting, quilting, costuming, blah blah blah...

She just didn't call it art, or call herself an artist, because she didn't paint, and she wasn't a man.  And if art history had taught her anything, it was that you had to paint and be a man to be a bona fide artist.

Instead, Catherine sewed.

It's a pincushion, but is it art?

With her presser foot eating up miles and miles on her sewing machine every week, Catherine taught herself the kinds of things that all creative people know.   She learned about proportion, and color.  She embraced her inner engineer, and learned to create her way out of the tight spots she had sewn herself into.  She contemplated texture and translucence.  She pondered both beauty and ugliness, and she read everything she could about the history and creative process of the fabricators who went before.

But the fact remained: she wasn't an artist because she didn't paint.  Don't act surprised - you've heard this bias before.

So Catherine took up painting.  For a year, she researched beloved painter Vincent Van Gogh's life, then painted and wrote a weekly blog about the experience.  Some of the paintings were huge, and some were quite tiny, but all were at least loosely based on the work and life of Vincent.

VVG

After 52 paintings, and 52 weeks of intensive art history research, Catherine came to a conclusion:

There is more to art than paintings.

Artists can't help but make art.  It leaks out of them like milk from a nursing mother.  

But not everybody can be a painter.  Financial considerations, or social status, or (most likely of all) gender decided who (historically) were the artists and who were the artisans.  

After studying Vincent and many other creative types, Catherine concluded that the kind of art that anybody makes is entirely dependent upon the tools, materials and encouragement available to them at the time.  Picasso painted, Rodin sculpted, and Catherine sewed; in the end it was all just making art.  It was all nothing more than a collective creative leak.

With the Vincent paintings done, Catherine looked around for something new to do, and decided to inform her two dimensional creations with painting and sewing. 

gessoed, painted, and sewn.

For Catherine, it was both a radical and inevitable idea.

Yes, she broke an art rule.  Punish her if you must.  But the rule is not the point.  When it comes to making art, rules never are.

The point is to make art.

That's it. 

Catherine makes art.  

Let her know if you like it, or even if you don't.  It won't matter either way, because, as Catherine learned from her buddy Vincent, you just can't stop an artist.  You can't stop art.

Detail of one of Catherine's fractured action paintings

Catherine Hicks Paintings - Late summer, early autumn 2013

Here, in no particular order, are the paintings I have been working on.  I am interested in achieving a new and heretofore undiscovered dimensionality in my work, as well as pushing myself to challenge my own notion of what, exactly, is a "canvas?"  I am also interested in honoring the women who have come before me - never the artists, but always the artisans...  

Here is a small woven painting:

(group show selection)

An acrylic painting on "scaled" linen - like a carpet, it has a nap, which shows differently depending upon which way the scales are smoothed... not exactly a painting, nor a sculpture, it is an object which falls somewhere in between...

Here is a much larger woven painting:

 These woven paintings are initiated as Pollock painted, with his ground-breaking action paintings.  I take it a step further, though, by then fracturing the painting and weaving it back together, creating a picture plane filled with hundreds of frenetic, dynamic little paintings.

And now some paintings with "holes"

 Some of the holes are "innies,"  like this one on on linen, which is later shown painted....

 And some of the holes are "outies..." (also on linen)

 Above and at right is a different kind of woven painting... (also selected for a group show.)

Like writhing snakes, every surface is gessoed, painted, and comes slithering away from the canvas. It is both agitating and soothing, like an hour with Pandora.

And here is my painted hole.  Where does it go?

 Here is another piece that was selected for a group show - vibrant color which slides, dripping off the canvas.

And a cooler, larger fractured painting....

 Painted not after Monet, but rather inspired by what you get on google image when you search his "Water Lillies..."

 And here is a straight on silk painting; experimenting with brush work and dams to hold the color...

 There is nothing like the translucence of silk...





A colorful doodle.

Thanks for looking.

If you have any comments or questions, please feel free to leave some trace behind.

My brushes are busy, so there will be more to come.

Catherine