Pensile Blossom

See Katherine Daniels’s work in WTP Vol. V #9

beads and wire
51” x 8” x 5”

In a Venn diagram my work occupies a space where painting, sculpture, and craft intersect. An obsessive focus on color and composition are taken from my formal training as a painter. My paintings became sculptures when I began constructing compositions out of things instead of paint because I needed to touch, push and pull the forms more physically than with just a brush. Often those things are craft materials used with techniques like sewing, beading, and weaving. This a language I learned as a child in West Virginia from my mother, who knit and sewed. Whether my work takes the form of a drawing, paint, sculpture, weaving, or installation, the pieces I make are eccentric abstraction. They are constructed from everyday objects and materials, but are transformed into elaborate ornamental forms.

I use the shapes of beads as building blocks or strips of ribbons and their colors as paints. I am devoted to creating an unlikely beauty in my work with a mash-up of styles from process art, craft, post-minimalism, and ornamental and biomorphic abstraction. My work engages the tension within the physical forms and the stylistic contradictions while holding onto a sense of formality through a dedication to line, color, and composition.” — Katherine Daniels