Kathy Donovan

Exhibiting in the Satellite Gallery at 131 Genesee Street on Bleecker side
June 4 - mid September

2022 Satellite Gallery Sponsor: Coldwell Banker Faith Properties

About the Artist
Kathy Donovan is an artist and educator who lives and works in the Mohawk Valley, and has been a long time artist in residence at 4 Elements Studio. Her creative work is primarily visual arts, but she also practices graphic design and blog writing. Donovan is currently working at New Hartford Central School District as an elementary education technology teacher.

About the Artwork
"I am unaware of where these ladies emerged from nor do I wish to pretend that I do, but what I can tell you is that I was inspired to work tall, long canvases. So, I stretched five tall, slim canvasses, no more questions asked.

Donovan made five paintings that comprise this series of colorful and abstracted female figures entitled Totems of Our Times: The Brides of Kucamonga.

"Five is an odd number in the mathematical sense but it also represented a new oddity for me. I am usually motivated to work in dualities, pairs, so I was intrigued by this blip. It made me look back for an unconscious motivation of why five was pushing through. I have lived five decades, I come from a family of five, right, but that did not seem to click. Then I remembered the dream. Months ago I saw of a room of five "presenters", all gathered around a tableau of sorts in a computer lab. They were dark and mysterious shades, yet I remained, surprisingly, unafraid. I stood before them so they could "present" to me. I do not remember what they said or did in this dream all I know is that I understood them. Could that be it? Again, it is not part of my consciousness while creating yet with this I felt a better vibe about the motivation of five.

I say this because my internal and external critics have criticized these ladies for being too splashy (AKA defaulting to kitsch), not being of the depth that paintings are required to maintain transcendence of their medium (ambiguity, brevity, complexity, translucency). My most bitter inner-critic blasts me for even attempting to combine by love for myth & archetypal imagery into contemporary, cognitive, art-making. In other words, I see where I have over-worked these, I know where pieces get stale and confined, choked by their own discourse, by their bling. But, I also know that they need to be revealed before I go any further. Looking more closely I hear them speaking to me, about the times women are living within. We are often choked, scorned for being too cute or glitzed; our Rapunzel hair styles may be laden with stones, they no longer flow, no longer functional, will not allow the prince to make his way to us. There are faces screaming, leering, behind us, yet how oblivious we all have become to the sirens! There are blue flames at our feet. It is cool, unbending, refreshing; I see it as invigorating our paths. Each have plasticity, they are transformative. They are totem brides because they all possess some type of tiaras or crowns upon their heads, with veils of rain. And, there is sexual energy. Always the power of Anima / Animus, Female / Male. We are the life source, we are the continuum, we are the Eves who dared to lead, break a new momentum out of the garden of patriarchy. What will we make of it?"

Artist's Website