She lies on the ground, turns her body towards the canvas that will eventually become a painting full of colour, and starts creating. Dallas-born painter Kate Barbee is carried away by feeling, and needs space to express emotions that can sometimes be difficult to manage. Her latest series focuses on self-portraiture - a necessity during lockdown. In Feral Flora womanhood is the protagonist in her creations. Kate Bardee depicts herself figuratively or conceptually, without filter. Free and wild, like her new exhibition, Feral Flora, at the Kohn Gallery in Los Angeles. You can visit it from today until next March 25.
Starting from a miscellany of art movements, among which German Expressionism and Cubism stand out, Barbee turns to painting to channel her thoughts. She has a preference for large format, many of her paintings are made on a human scale, and the multidisciplinary artist infuses everything with colour. Orange, green, yellow, blue and pink, meld with many others in an engaging harmony where boundaries are blurred, providing an extra dose of texture and movement. It is as if Marc Chagall’s paintings delved into femininity, through a contemporary prism; now saturated with bright pink colours that coexist with chaos and the search to understand human emotions and sensuality.
It is precisely in this need to express herself freely, that she rejects rules of formats and technique. The American painter uses textile fragments from discarded works and tests, incorporating them into her final work. Kate Bardee creates multifigurative scenes in Brush Fire, Brett or Nesting, which are some of her exhibited works. Inspired by artists such as Cecily Brown, Joan Snyder or Mark Bradford, and after a lockdown in which she says she has connected with herself by being away from community, Feral Flora is a large-scale dream trip that invites us to feel and rest the mind for a while.
It is precisely in this need to express herself freely, that she rejects rules of formats and technique. The American painter uses textile fragments from discarded works and tests, incorporating them into her final work. Kate Bardee creates multifigurative scenes in Brush Fire, Brett or Nesting, which are some of her exhibited works. Inspired by artists such as Cecily Brown, Joan Snyder or Mark Bradford, and after a lockdown in which she says she has connected with herself by being away from community, Feral Flora is a large-scale dream trip that invites us to feel and rest the mind for a while.
