Transformation and the Void
Artist Katie Cassidy.
Katie Cassidy has been a positive force for 530 Burns Gallery not only in the growing popularity of her transformative oil paintings, but also in her gentle spirit. When Cassidy delivers new work to the gallery’s brick-and-mortar exhibition space, she emanates a certain calm that, too, jumps from hand to brush and canvas. “We always look forward to unveiling new work by Katie. When the wrapping is removed, there is a sigh of contentment… like everything is as it should be in that particular moment,” says Molly Lindberg, 530 Burns Gallery Assistant Director.
As Phil Lederer of SRQ Magazine wrote on Cassidy’s recent solo exhibition, Meditative State: “On the walls at every side, large-scale works by Cassidy evoke sea, sky and land, in great atmospheric canvases that simultaneously intrigue and soothe the viewer.” In addition to her work as a painter, Cassidy teaches yoga and meditation, which informs her work. Cassidy taught a two week introductory chair-yoga class to accompany this exhibition and demonstrate the possibilities for the body that are unlocked for the eye in her paintings.
Cassidy says, “I take the liberty of expanding and contracting what is before me. I allow myself to submerge into the imagined, uncharted, yet to be discovered, places.”
In works like Rhythmic Silence, the viewer enters a void that clears the mind and allows the viewer to re-emerge with a newfound fullness brought forth from the movement within the constraints of the canvas. Each work is overtaken by a haze of subtly shifting colors that engulfs the canvas, leaving viewer with evocative memories of life before entering the paintings' transformative void, indicating this is just the beginning.
Bravo!
Follow the link to read the full article mentioned here in SRQ Magazine.