Katherine Patterson

Lives and works in New York State, USA

Artist statement

Katherine’s artwork explores landscape, viewed from the eastern shore of Lake George, as a metaphor for the continual shifts of perception and memory. The pairings of drawings and cyanotypes are made directly from observation, but with the assistance of a lens. The drawings are made on site, with each view mediated through a homemade camera obscura and traced onto vellum. The graphite images constitute hand-drawn negatives, which the artist uses to make direct contacts print via sunlight and photo-sensitive paper. This process reclaims the mechanism of photographic reproduction and reverts it back into the organic realm of sunlight, eye, and hand. The dual image (traced negative with cyanotype print) also speaks to the layers of memory images that accrue, and then fade, within the subjectivity our mind’s eye. Plein air oil paintings are documented at the site and moment of their creation. Each painted panel is a record of seeing and painting a particular scene, while the printed photo acts as the echo, or memory, of that experience, filtered through a digital camera. In this body of work, themes of landscape and perception intertwine as an examination of the different roles of the eye, mind, hand, and camera in the creation and retention of memories.

Artwork