Kate McCavitt
Kate McCavitt is an Asian informed Mixed Media Abstract Painter. In her work, East meets West in the fusion of contemporary experimental water media and ancient Asian brush work influences. Kate truly creates her original art “Between Two Worlds”.
In her previous lifetime this time around, about four years ago, she owned a corporate Project Management company for about sixteen years and stressed over enterprise voice and data installations which were hot beds of things busting and going wrong. Enough! She decided one day to do something she actually wanted to do. Risking her reason for it, she took her art to a full time adventure.
Trained as a Sumie artist, often called “Chinese Brush”, and self-taught in other genres, Kate lavishes all of her colorful, textured abstract paintings with the subtleties of Asian tradition. Rich layers of fluid acrylics, gloss mediums and metallic gesso capture between them both the random events of experimental techniques, and ancient icons of Zen Circles, delicate chrysanthemum, circling yin/yang figures, and representational foil spheres hand embossed by the artist.
Colors, ratios, numerological philosophies, polarities and sequences all dance together within Kate’s unique abstract style. No two pieces can ever be the same. McCavitt’s titles for her work are often “Untitled” for she believes the observer will create their own through how they connect to the work. Many of her long “SuiteStickS” pieces also can be hung any way the orientation pleases the viewer.
A Marvelous Life Change
Kate McCavitt, a native of New York, lives next to a wildlife conservation corridor in Oceanside, California with the love of her life, grandchildren nearby, a resident hummingbird family, and bunnies, egrets, coyotes, bats, crows and hawks. Her studio is in her home and her home is her Catharsis Gallery for showing her work in a beautiful setting. She finds joy in the Artist’s Way, in writing and creating art journals, in being a grandmother, in long walks, scuba diving, teaching art and inspiring others. She tries to live by Martha Graham’s advice, “You have to keep open and aware directly to the urges that motivate you.”
“Up until age 40, all my art was practical. Today I look at the delicate crochet work my grandmother did, and I see exquisite art and pattern. I want to use it as a stencil for powdered gold against rich purple. Maybe this IS where my inspiration came from to do embossed foil spheres. All of my art is born of this attention and an awareness that everything in the world is immediately available for me to witness and that allows me to find the extraordinary. My inspiration is the infinite and the infinitesimal and mostly the Ordinary. How lucky we are to know they are all one and the same.”
Symbol Hunting
“Symbol Hunting is an avocation for me, found in life’s small synchronicities. Standing inside the centuries old ritual tomb at Newgrange in the Boyne Valley of Ireland, the spirals carved thousands of years ago in the standing stones, become embedded within me. I can’t help it, it just happens and they will inevitably show up in some painting. Diving at 60 feet, floating effortlessly just a foot above iridescent purple tube sponges where neon orange cleaner shrimp and glowing yellow wrasse play around the openings, using only my breath to change my depth, I find my mind expands. It will manifest in my next artwork. Stunning sunsets, sleeping children, light through cobalt or ruby glass, a lover’s laugh or shoulder muscle, sea horses, colored sand patterns on a deserted beach all become part of my interior visual library and Iconography. I am very blessed.”
Spheres
“The Spheres that are everywhere in my art, started as simple rounds of foil or gold, copper or silver leaf and evolved into a myriad of icons. My hands were familiar with the Zen Circle or Enso and the Sphere became it’s solidified counterpart. The Enso is the place where the heart and the mind have become one. The Spheres are planets, mandalas, suns, moons, and parallell universes. They are Sacred Circles of all kinds; medicine wheels, sweat lodge, spinning chakras, and the eye of the Witness the Tao speaks of. Lenses on the subconscious; portals into my creative spirit and process. Black holes, bubbles, my grandmother’s doilies, galaxies and conduits to other places. They are the calm in the center of the chaos. Look closer; they contain the particle and the wave, the egg and the seed. They are the expression of the manifest and unmanifest potential.”
To See More Of Kate’s Work Visit www.RosettaStoneFineArtVideos.com