Catherine Spencer

Catherine Spencer, whose work will appear in the WTP special winners edition in December, is a Cleveland-based artist, although originally from the Finger Lakes region of upstate New York. She earned her Bachelors in Fine Arts in 2013 from Alfred University. Through the program, she had the opportunity to study abroad in Florence, Italy, with SRISA, which had an enormous impact on her work today.

A direct correlation can be drawn between her paintings and having lived a majority of her life in rural America. She describes her current body of work as “filled with complexities and hidden tensions that slip easily in and out of abstraction and representation.” As are the paintings she submitted for the competition, often her work is an expression of both political and social views, as well as a fascination with the natural world. Her works range in size, as she responds to her “source material and challenge[s] perception of scale. I begin each painting like a new scientific discovery, with no specific image in mind. During the progression, I continue to examine my own abstract environment and intuitively respond after each decision. Much like a dissection, each blank canvas goes through a continuous process of layering paint and then removing it to expose intriguing spaces that invite an exploration into a new unfamiliar terrain. There is an element of an internal dissection within these paintings, as they are the doorway to my subconscious.”

In 2015, she was accepted as part of the Six in Studio month-long residency sponsored by the Cleveland West Art League, and was a guest lecturer at Baldwin Wallace College. In 2014 she was awarded an honorable mention in the Saatchi Art Abstract Online Art Competition. You can see her work at http://www.catherinespencerpaintings.com/.

Look for her works in the WTP 2017 special winners edition in December.

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