kathy klompas, 2023 juried exhibition

320 Broadway, Saratoga Springs, NY

February 11th - March 18th, 2023

 Artist Statement:

Wandering without a clear destination makes me happy.   As a printmaker working with monotype, I create multiple unique series of works encompassing my love of intuitively and spontaneously, exploring technique, materials and most important, color. 

In this series “Made Maps,” I was influenced by the physical process of how materials can be manipulated on the plate and layered to achieve depth and complexity, the moody color and vibrating energy leading me to delightful and unexpected outcomes.  With a few guidelines to focus and settle my forever wandering mind I set out to explore the possibilities, knowing that process has something to teach me, something to challenge me, to delight me, to inspire me.

By embarking on a journey of delight in the twists and turns of creative energy, setting my mind free to follow the cues, results in works full of hidden complexities which evoke an emotional response.  Constantly shifting back and forth between pieces, allowing them to grow as they feed off the remnants of the other works in progress, they form a complex and coherent whole.

This series reveals that the joy of traveling is expressed in the wandering -- a welcome escape from this destination-oriented world.   While the “Other Maps” prints were my stepping off point, I soon realized there was much value in the folded paper masks which create the open field and transfer back remnants of color, becoming “Retrieved Maps.”  And finally in this journey I was ready to soar, work larger and experiment with the “Birdseye Maps.”