Artist Bio
Born in 1957, Kathi Anderson was raised by a large extended family in rural southern Indiana, surrounded by coal mines and corn fields and cattle pastures. She was educated and employed in Indiana in social services before coming to Illinois nearly ten years ago. Trained by family expectations to be "practical", Kathi came late to art making– beginning to paint for the first time in her life the year she turned 40. She now lives in a rambling old house in the midst of the central Illinois prairie. With her studio at home, she paints nearly every day. Kathi is interested in exploring the shapes of curves, the colors of natural things, and in reinterpreting the symbolism of constructed artifacts.
Artist Statement
When I paint, it feels like playing in the mud. It is like cooking without a recipe or foraging for wild greens. It is Spell-making - mysterious, powerful, irresistible and utterly absorbing.
When I acquiesce to the physical movement of making marks of color, a visual manifestation of my emotional history and philosophical present emerges, all articulated without the intermediary of verbal language. My paintings are new images of the oldest of stories, creation, interpreted through the experiences of the female body.
I first began to paint using oils but now integrate other media - acrylics, pastels, oils, markers, colored paper, watercolor - to define images on found surfaces, including salvaged barn siding, roofing slate, construction board and field drainage tile, as well as the more traditional linen or cotton canvas.
The images are alter egos (and altar egos) mined from the place where my psyche joins with the collective spiritual unconscious. The surfaces stand in the stead of cave ceilings and mesa walls.
