Catherine Baker - Artist's Statement
An immersion in landscape has always been the starting point for my work. I love to walk every day close to where I live, and notice what draws my attention on that particular day. I make sketches and notes of observations and other feelings that may occur to me. Back in the studio, the sketches are part of the resources I use to fire up the painting process. My intention then is to explore the possibilities of abstract painting, to play with composition, mark‐making and colour juxtaposition, to simplify and refine down. I want to keep the process an open one and to ask questions of myself, things to take to the next piece of work. Once in the flow of painting, a recognition of a memory may take shape, and I will go with that and see where it takes me. The images that emerge are abstract but personal to me, characters that I come to know and have an affinity for.
On my studio wall I have a quote from the writer Hilary Mantel on her creative process: “you employ what Keats called negative capability ‐ you must endure doubt and follow paths without signposts.” These words give me courage to trust myself and embrace the feeling of not knowing what will happen in the studio each session, turning that fear of the unknown ‐ a blank canvas ‐ into the next exciting day of creativity.
The painters I admire and am influenced by range from the Romantic landscape tradition of Turner (especially the looser almost abstract watercolours), Constable's sketches, Whistler's Nocturnes, John Piper ‐ to Roger Hilton, Helen Frankenthaler, Rothko, Richard Diebenkorn, Cy Twombly and Howard Hodgkin and Ilse D'Hollander. Although the artist Edwina Leapman's painting language is very different from mine, the build-up of acrylic glazes and her use of colour I have admired immensely.
The element of drawing on paintings with graphite and charcoal and scratching through the surface was an influence initially from Roger Hilton. I also admire Agnes Martin's delicate use of pencil on her paintings. My own use of drawing is about revealing a working out of ideas ‐ another thing going on in the making up of the image, although it may not be obvious what this working out signifies. There may also be a few words half‐obscured. I want to get a sense of rawness and fragility by using drawing materials with the paint.
Top