Torn Seams

Third Place for Fine Art
See Catherine Spencer’s work in the 2017 Special Winners Edition

oil on canvas
18″ x 18″

A direct correlation can be drawn between my paintings and having lived a majority of my life in rural America. My current body of work is filled with complexities and hidden tensions that slip easily in and out of abstraction and representation.

As someone who has always struggled with verbal expression, I consider this work to be a visual language used to accurately express my fascination with the natural world and though it may not be obvious, my political and social views are embedded within each composition. My work ranges in size, as I respond to my source material and challenge 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 with these paintings as they are the doorway to my subconscious.” —Catherine Spencer