Kathryn Schmidt
Artist Statement
For the last several years I have described my paintings as being about climate change, the somber colors and images registering my despair as the evidence mounts. Paintings like “An Old Altar” are about making some kind of final plea for nature. Then came “West of Everything” and “They Were Kings and Queens,” in which figures move beyond the familiar.
More recently I have returned to the animal and bird images of my earlier work. There are the desperate deer images of “Alone and Heading North” and “First Mesa Vision”, and then came “A Sharp Intake of Breath”, in which I portray the deer as standing in judgment; they materialize in one’s vision, bearers of the knowledge that we are burning the ground beneath our feet. The deer in “Silent Rebuke” sounds the alarm.
“We have failed to live up to our geography.” Theodore Roethke