Kate Snow

Artist Statement

Rooted in the tenuous relationship between order and chaos, my work represents a desire to control the uncontrollable, while acknowledging the impossibility of such. This need to make sense of a bewilderingly complex world is personal, though it seems, perhaps now more than ever, to resonate more broadly. I see my own anxiety reflected in global unrest and in the electric sense of uncertainty currently permeating our collective subconsciousness. My need to create a place of safety within a world decidedly untidy is the impetus for all of my work. The employment of self-imposed boundaries – an extremely limited palette, excessively repetitive mark-making, reliance on shape and pattern, hard graphite lines delineating definitive borders – is fundamental to the process: I create rules to find freedom. Starting from a place of restriction, I can then contend with the unpredictability of the materials – how the paint behaves on a given day or irregularities in the handmade paper – and the spontaneity of evolution as the piece develops organically. Working in this way is its own meditation, an exercise in coming to terms with the discomfort of living in the duality of knowing and not knowing.