Something Bright: Kati Thomson's Golden Hour

Kati Thomson

I’m excited to (finally) (accidentally) feature an artist from both my home state and my home town: Kati Thomson. Although her studio is in Clovis, California, the Central Valley town I grew up in, I first discovered Kati Thomson last fall at the John Natsoulas Gallery in Davis, California (another valley town). As part of my little west coast book tour, I read at the gallery for Poetry in Davis (see picture below). I was nervous, as always, but happy to be surrounded by such fabulous paintings while I read a series of poems about a painter and her lover. Thomson’s art was the perfect backdrop for the story I was telling. I wrote her name in the back of my book, making a mental note to include her in my Featured Artist series. And it wasn’t until today! that I looked her up and discovered her Clovis-ness. Huzzah.

Poetry Night Reading Series, John Natsoulas Gallery, Davis, CA
September 19, 2024

In her personal note about the show, Thomson writes: “When I began this body of work last year, I remember a pervading sense of angst in the ether.  Conversations with friends and family were threaded with climate anxiety, doomscrolling, and a resignation to witnessing the decline of our society. Like so many people I felt the  binds of fatalism tightening around me and I just wanted to break away. I found myself drawn to images and memories in which I was unburdened by these larger questions and focused on the moment—in the flow.  Images of people in the vigor of life—dance, play, work, love, connection. Not for the purpose of avoidance—the problems of the world remain—but to remind myself of the reason we fight for a future.”

 

Golden Hour Swim II
acrylic and oil on canvas 48" x 36"

 

Cat Ladies
acrylic and oil on canvas 48” x 48”

Thomson’s solo show, Golden Hour, is figurative art re-figured. When I lived in California, the hour before sunset always made me feel better about everything. The world looks different at this juncture, and I needed the opportunity to rethink, review, and remake. (The golden hour just isn’t as prevalent in the Florida panhandle.) And that’s what Thomson’s paintings do: ask us to remember, re-envision, and re-love the human figure. It’s a practice. Practice, then remake the world at large.

 

Green Blanket
acrylic, oil, and paper on panel 16” x 20”


Golden Hour
acrylic and oil on canvas 48″ x 60″


Firelei Báez: On Imagining Positive Possible Futures

Firelei Báez

With election day upon us, I wanted to offer hope for a better future by sharing one of my favorite artists, Firelei Báez. Báez’s paintings are large-scale explosions of color and texture, which is why they appeal to me. Their fantastic scale allows my mind to wander to new realms (I’m a sucker for wandering). But Báez’s art, posthumanist in philosophy, is so much more than visually appealing—it’s a visceral reminder that things can always go differently. Drawing from and destabilizing the past, Baez presents new possibilities for the future. Hauser & Wirth (her gallery) describe it best:

In exuberantly colorful works on paper and canvas, large-scale sculptures, and immersive installations, Báez combines representational cues that span from hair textures to textile patterns, plant life, folkloric and literary references, and wide-ranging emblems of healing and resistance. Often featuring strong female protagonists, Báez’s portraits incorporate the visual languages of regionally-specific mythology and ritual alongside those of science fiction and fantasy, to envision identities as unfixed, and inherited stories as perpetually-evolving. These empowered figures’ eyes most often engage directly with the viewer, asserting individuality and agency within their states of flux.

Untitled (Encyclopedia of Gestures / Le Jeu du Monde)
2020 oil and acrylic on archival printed canvas 105 x 131 inches

The emphasis on fluidity and permeability shows us there is never one way of being or seeing, existence is dynamic.

Báez begins many of her pieces by pouring paint over large-scale reproductions of historical documents: maps, travelogues, scientific manuals—documents originally created to claim, colonize, and control. Fantastical creatures and hybrid species overrun these Eurocentric documents, defying categorization and making space for those who have been erased or excluded from the dominant narratives. And this making of space is also a making of new possibilities. As reviewer AX Mina notes, Báez reminds us “that maps advance the fiction that we could treat the earth as an object to be measured, cut up, and extracted from without consequences.” Báez reminds us that the maps themselves are also a fantasy.

The title of AX Mina’s review says it all: Firelei Báez Paints Away the World’s Borders.

And that’s the vision we need for a better future: one that embraces a global community, one that isn’t trying to push us back to a past bent on serving one monolithic identity while exploiting and destroying all others.

Constellation (Movements reimagined)
2019 Oil and Acrylic on canvas 40 x 30 x 2 in

Born in the Dominican Republic, Firelei Báez is a New York City-based artist. Báez received an M.F.A. from Hunter College, a B.F.A. from the Cooper Union’s School of Art, and studied at the Skowhegan School of Painting and Sculpture. She is the recipient of many awards, most recently the Cooper Union President’s Citation (2022), Artes Mundi Prize (2021), and Philip Guston Rome Prize (2021). 

Untitled (Central Power Station)
2019 Acrylic and oil on archival printed canvas 96 7/8 x 124 5/8 in

Anacaona (destroy the beauty that has injured me)
2024 Oil and acrylic on archival printed canvas 228.6 x 207 cm

Fall 2020 Featured Artist: Felicia Van Bork

I believe I must be painting this way because I am in revolt against the unconsidered opinions expressed by people in the news these days. There is an aching need for empathy and tenderness in the world and I am teaching myself these things as fast as I can. Felicia van Bork, March 28, 2020

Comment 17   2019, oil on canvas, 14 x 11 in.

Comment 17
2019, oil on canvas, 14 x 11 in.

Felicia Van Bork

Born in Toronto, Canada, Felicia van Bork completed her undergraduate studies at the Ontario College of Art and Design University and earned her MFA at the Massachusetts College of Art and Design at the Fine Arts Work Center, Provincetown, MA.

The artist's paintings and collages are widely collected in the United States and Canada and Felicia has been the recipient of numerous residency fellowships, including from the Virginia Center for the Creative Arts and McColl Center for Art + Innovation, where she manages the printmaking studio. In the summer of 2017, she was a Visiting Artist at the American Academy in Rome.

But what I really love is her series of How To collages…

How to Turn the Moon  2014, collage on panel, 36 x 36 in.

How to Turn the Moon
2014, collage on panel, 36 x 36 in.

How to Beckon  2015, collage on panel, 36 x 36 in.

How to Beckon
2015, collage on panel, 36 x 36 in.


Watch Felicia van Bork discuss her collage process!


How to Divide and Multiply  2015, collage on panel, 36 x 36 in.

How to Divide and Multiply
2015, collage on panel, 36 x 36 in.