Kate Russo – Storyteller

Time is the storyteller’s medium. It can be manipulated, drawn out, exploited - all depending on the artist’s narrative. As both an artist and a writer, time and its parameters are the framework inherent in everything I make. My abstract narrative-based artworks are appropriated from existing art historical themes, as well as patterns and architecture, then re-channeled through a feminist lens. The works in Storyteller bring together three aspects of my work: painting, stitching and drawing.

The Male Gaze series uses palettes from pre-existing and well-known paintings that share a familiar motif from art history. Read from left to right, row by row, each painting of twenty ovals is a colorists journey through five hundred years (16th century to the 21st) of art history on a specific theme. By matching the palette used in the original painting, each individual oval represents a painting by a deceased male artist. I consider the oval to be his portrait. Themes include: Men Spying on Women Bathing, Men Staring at Women From Behind, Men Watching Women Working, Men Observe Women Sewing, Men Contemplate Women Reading, and Men Equate Flowers with Femininity.

When I’m stitching, I am influenced by Rozsika Parker’s book, The Subversive Stitch, which examines how needlework was used to tell stories and pass time through the centuries. More than any other art form, needlework is defined by the amount of time it takes to complete the work. Though often intricate and meticulous, stitching is also repetitive, laborious and even painful. In The Subversive Stitch, Parker asserts the act of stitching is subversive, giving women the time to think, plan and even plot. Time spent with a needle and thread in my hand is no different. Once I’ve worked out a pattern and the needle is passing in and out of the paper, I’m suddenly plotting and planning, scheming and subverting. The works themselves allude to this.

Inherent in all of the stitch work is a sense of anticipation: a book before it is cracked, a still room, an audience waiting for what’s to come. The Novellas, inspired by traditional book cover design, nod to the plotting and planning of their maker. In the Homestead, Rooms, and Corners series, I’m building sets, floorboard by floorboard, brick by brick, conveying a sense of solid structure, while also imparting the softness of needlework. Equally, I’m interested in the tension of known gender roles present in the work. Brick walls and parquet floors which are traditionally laid by men are, here, stitched by a woman. Agnes’ Room, Eva’s Room, and Louise’s Room, inspired by the works of Agnes Martin, Eva Hesse, and Louise Bourgeois, are the start of a new series of work, dedicated to female artists who had a subversive relationship with pattern, repetition, domesticity and obsession.