painting
Slow Simmer: Updated Paintings by Kate Van Steenhuyse
My paintings and drawings emphasize the process of reacting. Typically this process unfolds over a few months, but for the works in Slow Simmer, these pieces have been in process or revisited after years of first being started. Painting is a negotiation of ideas and decisions taking physical shape: sometimes proud, lovely, or awkward and most often decidedly not heroic. The finished works serve as riddles meant for contemplation, not as vehicles for a singular message or conclusion. At this moment in my life, I am only able to focus on painting in small snippets of time often separated by months away from the studio.
Slow Simmer is a collection of explorations in how the familiar can be pushed to still surprise. I like to keep the viewer, and myself while working in the studio, constantly questioning, thoughtfully present, and even possibly a bit uncomfortable. The goal is to suspend the viewer in a state of active looking to create a prolonged experience where we get to—for a fleeting moment—set aside the notion of knowing and exist simply in a state of being. Slow Simmer represents the attempt to hold this value and this approach to process in concert with long stretches of time. How can we manipulate the familiar to continue to find surprise and wonder?