Can’t Fight The Feeling

Kristi Kohut Studio Gallery
Jan 31, 2019 5:31PM

By Laura Staugaitis Organic lines in contrasting colors appear to subtly vibrate in the abstract works comprising Kristi Kohut’s Chromatic Harmony series. Each work in the series begins with a rectangular sheet of rice paper, to which Kohut adds stripes of, well, all stripes. Representative of Kohut’s wide-ranging, exploratory approach to her practice, the artist’s works in her Chromatic Harmony series share a common structure. But, true to form, the artist explores a broad interpretation of long, thin lines of color using acrylic, ink, watercolor, and pastel.

Kristi Kohut
CHROMATIC HARMONY #29, 2018
Kristi Kohut Studio Gallery

In some pieces, like Chromatic Harmony #9, Kohut’s colorful lines crowd together, jostling for attention and even jumping forward onto a second layer of rice paper, leaving other colors in a background role. Other works, like Chromatic Stripe # 4, allow for more spaciousness as each line breathes on its own, exhaling shimmering puffs of cut glass glitter that form a snowy fog over the fields of color. In still others, Kohut employs a more regimented style, putting precisely-edged lines in strict formation, marching left to right, as in Chromatic Harmony #29 , which stands in contrast to the tipping and twisting linework of Fight Song and The Sun Also Rises.

Kohut explains that she balances structure and freedom in the series by always working from the top edge of the paper, and using a grid to form guidelines for each stripe. From the first-laid color, each one is selected in the moment, “adding colors like notes in a song, seeing how they all react and adding the next to try to evoke a feeling.”

Whether strikingly raw on the variegated texture of rice paper or mounted on acrylic with a glittering veil of cut glass crystals, each work in Kohut’s Chromatic Harmony collection invites the viewer to find their own song in resonant, rhythmic color combinations.

Kristi Kohut
CHROMATIC HARMONY #21, 2017
Kristi Kohut Studio Gallery

Kristi Kohut, CHROMATIC HARMONY , 2017. Kristi Kohut Studio Gallery

Kristi Kohut, CHROMATIC HARMONY , 2017. Kristi Kohut Studio Gallery

Kristi Kohut, CHROMATIC BEAT, 2017. Kristi Kohut Studio Gallery

Kristi Kohut, CHROMATIC HARMONY , 2017. Kristi Kohut Studio Gallery

Kristi Kohut Studio Gallery