Catherine Carilli – Abstract Painter

A Tribute to Rwanda After the Genocide as seen through Art and Photography of Catherine Carilli from Vimeo.

More than a decade has passed since the country of Rwanda shattered into a bloody hate genocide and political crisis.  Yes, this situation is a work that is partly mending but the photos and installation art that I have brought together with me, reflect a lighter global picture.  This body of work is a visual statement echoes the crisis of strife between so many religions and ethnic groups.  We will all repeat the horror of “Rwanda’s War“, and ethnic cleansing will continue until we put our common humanity as one number global priority.

See the photographs from this amazing trip.

“Color is one of the great things in the world that makes life worth living to me.  And as I have come to think of painting, it is my effort to create an equivalent with paint (that will) color the world and life as I see it.” – Georgia O’Keefe

 When I think of my twenty-year pursuit of painting, I often ponder this question. Painting is a very fulfilling creative pursuit, but it can also be frustrating and tedious.  Creating a painting is at times a personal challenge between color and canvas and the artist.  Some days in the studio are like taking “The Beatles’s Magical Mystery Tour Bus” into a delightful, provocative world full of color space and shape.  These playful canvases invoke the feeling that “color is running amok…” as a critic once said about one critic said about one of my favorite artists William Mallord Turner. 

Some successful studio days are peaceful and meditative, and these canvases reflect the Zen feeling of being perfectly in the moment.  Time lapses, and as the artist Henri Matisse has said “the comfort of color” enhances the world. In these abstract works, colors and layers combine together to move into their own dance and create a new visual world.  And on the days that painting is a battle, I think of the artist Gerhard Richter, who scrapes colors onto his canvas into muddy rainbows that invoke glimmering brightness. 

I also paint to explore the visual world; hence all of my artwork is not abstract.  Painting the human form intrigues me, as well as landscape.  My figures are often gestural, some with active lines and bright colors; with other figures I use sleepy lines and muted colors.  Landscapes also provide a direct visual representation of my world as I color it. Painting intimately connects me to self and the world.  Through sharing my artwork, the viewers then bring their own “eyes” to the work.  My work asks to be seen with the heart and analyzed with the mind.  I hope the viewer also finds emotional space within my work that they can intimately connect with.As we move into a more technological world, painting becomes an even more precious reflection of who we are and of our uniqueness.  It is a glimpse into our humanity and confirms the individual.  After all, humans have been making marks since the Stone Age, and we will continue to do so as we define ourselves into the 21^st Century. 

By Catherine Carilli 

“Why Paint?”  Invitational Painting Exhibition   October 2-November 2, 2008,  Front Range Community College, Westminster Campus.  3645 West 112th Avenue, Westminster CO, 80031 • 303-404-5000.  Opening Reception, October 2, 4-7 PM.