The bed she slept in, the porridge she ate.

Art Show

2012-02-01T06:16:00.001-08:00

Hi there, I've been neglecting my blog recently, but I'm back in action and ready to participate once again! I joined this online art show, and am trying to accumulate some votes for the people's choice award. Please have a look and if you like the work, give me a vote!

http://katlaranger.artistswanted.org/yr2011

Statement for new work

2011-07-18T15:12:00.000-07:00

My current work can be put into two categories. Work with backgrounds, and work without. I have begun to see the pieces with backgrounds as reflections of waking life. They are about the individual in relation to her environment, and her experience in a physical space. Neither the figure nor the background can be separated in this instance, and the two are given equal weight. My figures are always based on the way they feel, not the way they look, and the backgrounds in these paintings are similarly created from the emotional quality of the space.

The second group of paintings I have worked on, void of backgrounds, are based on one's life in dreams. In this world the individual begins to lose her sense of boundaries, and her emotions begin to spill out into the empty space. She fills this environment with her presence, and has nothing to respond to but this overflow of herself.

I make these paintings to uncover something honest about my personal experience as a human being in modern society. They are my gut feelings manifested. Like dreams themselves, everything in my work comes from an emotional core, and the deeper meaning will depend on what the viewer brings with him.

Pirate ship dream

2011-05-26T05:59:00.000-07:00

Last night I was on a pirate ship in stormy weather. First I was a taken captive by the ships crew and thrown into a small metal cell with other prisoners(I was a man at this point). Then a claw came down to pick me up and swing me around the ship. At this point, I began watching the man being swung around the ship from the deck-he was a friend of my father's, and some kind of outlaw(I was now myself).

Inside the ship, the rooms were my parents house, and there I was in their room, pinching a fat girl. She got up to go to the bathroom, and I looked at myself in the full length mirror. I had lacerations all over my body. There were criss cross cuts running down my back to the middle of my thighs, and on my stomach there were long, vertical, parallel cuts(which upset me because it had ruined the horizontal line that I had tattooed on my stomach). I had no recollection of this happening, and showed a few people, but no one had any idea.

Then my dad was fighting with his friend, when some cops showed up. I took the knife out of his friends had and assured the cops that my dad was fine by saying, "He used to play with BB guns all the time, don't worry." When they left, my dad thanked me for saving him and asked me to punch him in(the time card for my job was there in the dining room). I found his time card but it was just his name on a piece of paper and a code, so I tried to punch it in, but I'm no good with codes in my sleep.

Backgrounds

2011-03-21T18:30:00.000-07:00

Today I had my art student over, and we talked about why he likes art.. mostly in attempts to get him ready for some sort of art institute interview, and some interesting things came up. One of the things he said was "I like art because it has no limits." I think this is one of the reasons I like art too. A figure in a painting can be realistic, flat, misshapen, have missing parts, be drawn from memory, or be drawn from observation. I don't have to show things the way they look, and I don't have to keep the rules consistent. It's all about the intent. If you do it knowingly, there can be no mistakes in art. This is also one of the things that make drawing and painting so difficult. You don't have to follow any rules, and you are allowed to(and will) make a bad drawing sometimes. This is a crucial part of figuring out what does work and what is actually interesting to look at.

Something new that has emerged recently for me is the use of backgrounds. If you've noticed in the past, I kept the background pretty sparse and abstract. It has been a long run of figures squirming in their own emotional filth, which is fine, but it was time for a divergence. There is something very satisfying about this kind of structured, pretty painting, and I'm hoping it will bring something new to the figures.

The first painting here is also loosely inspired by a piece of writing by my friend and writer, Josh Amses. More collaborations between us to come!

'Hello at the Beach' 22x30" gouache on paper

'Forget-Me-Not' 22x30" gouache on paper

'London Bridge' 22x30" gouache and acrylic on paper

'The Sun' 20x30" gouache on paper

Telling Secrets

2010-09-12T20:40:00.000-07:00

http://www.projekt30.com/telling_secrets.php

My work is featured in this online show "Telling Secrets"

I love telling keeping secrets and I love telling secrets. I love how the secrets find a way to seep out.

Plateau

2010-09-01T21:40:00.000-07:00

The Devil and the Deep Blue Sea 10x12"

Before I get better at anything, it seems I have to get worse. I've had some artist's block recently.. in a way. What I mean by that is that I've been doing some really ugly drawings. It's weird to to go work for 10 hours, clean the bathroom, make food, and then do a terrible drawing while listening to my Peggy Lee radio station.

It seems like for the last 5 years or so my work has focused on the glorification of negative feelings. Turning something bad into something beautiful and different. That has been my process anyway, but it does requires a certain amount of self-disgust (which I've had plenty of).

I'm starting to feel tired. I actually want to feel good things, not just make the bad things pretty. How does that effect the art? Maybe it's time to draw someone else.

Old Work Inspiring New Work

2010-08-18T18:31:00.000-07:00

I just had my hard drive from my old broken laptop transferred to a brand new machine, and as a result, I got all my old pictures back. In looking at some of my older work, I realized that there is a lot there that I want to get back to. Something about the reality and straightforwardness in some of the figures made me really excited, and I'm hoping to make some new work inspired by my older work.

soft ground etching 22x30"

ink and pastel on paper 22x30"

charcoal and acrylic on masonite

linoleum print

gouache and paint from tibet

It's a little known fact that I did learn how to do paintings of deities in Tibet from Monks who didn't speak very much English. It's not really my usual thing, but they were lovely to work with and it was a lot of fun to learn.

I also used to assist a biological illustration class for kids, and almost went into medical illustration. I still have the urge to become a tattoo artist sometimes, and this work seems to relate to that desire more.

Ariel

2010-07-30T17:26:00.000-07:00

My princesses are slowly all finding their homes.
"Ariel" has just sold.

Ariel, oil on wood panel, 3x4'

Love and Resentment

2010-07-05T12:35:00.000-07:00

(new painting in progress)

I've been thinking a lot about where I keep my emotions in my body, and how crazy it is that we can bury resentments in our organs and connective tissues. I've been realizing just how much a quiet angry child can store in there, and how is seeps out in unexplained discomfort and uneasiness. I've been thinking about defenses, and how it feels when something has gotten in and realized you were just a sack full of organs; realized that there was no magic or mystery there. Like rotting inside, like worms in your guts, like someone getting too close and trying to open you up for the world to see. Like having a camera snaked through your bellybutton, and having your inflamed appendix removed. Like being examined in front of a room full of family members and strangers. Like being 15 and unconscious on an operating table you'll never remember. There is an anger in me that requires extreme reserve or extreme gluttony. It makes me feel like Saturn devouring his children. I think Goya showed it best-

Goya, Saturn Devouring His Son (1819)

SHOW IN PITTSBURG

2010-06-25T06:14:00.000-07:00

I will be showing several of my small paintings in Pittsburg next week in the show-"Art of Consciousness: Creative Expressions of Spirit" on July 2nd at the International Children's Art Gallery (5020 Penn Avenue). Anyone in that area please check it out!

Drawing in Mirrors

2010-06-15T19:56:00.001-07:00

Imaginary Mother

2010-05-24T12:01:00.000-07:00

Sometimes when I'm working, I get a phrase stuck in my head, and with the left piece the phrase has been "imaginary mother". It might end up being the title of the piece, or inspiring the title, but we'll see. I see these pieces as mother and daughter.

As my twenties roll on I start feeling the tightening of my reproductive organs, threatening to strangle me if I go another month without reproducing. It's making me think a lot about my life in big, long-term ways. My mind works like this: if you really like something about your life, it'll just be like that until you die. You may as well just fast-forward to the end.
That makes me antsy and makes me question everything.
The imaginary mother isn't comfortable with being done yet.

Self-portraits

2010-05-06T20:01:00.000-07:00

Self Portrait, 30"x44" pen and watercolor on paper- in progess

I am the model in almost all of my work, but I don't consider most of my pieces to be self-portraits. Usually I'm trying to embody a feeling in my art, and looking at myself helps to take me where I want to go with the piece. I think the human body can hold a great deal of emotion, and that is interesting.
A few days ago the drawing I was working on gave birth- a piece of paper came out from under the drawing after I had been working on it for several weeks. I starting this piece with the urge to draw something more real- maybe draw more like I know what I'm doing. The piece I have been working on is messy and frustrating, so I began the new daughter-drawing. After a few minutes I realized that I wasn't using myself as a tool in this drawing, I was drawing myself. It's distinctly different, and I like the piece very much. It makes me excited about drawing. I could write volumes about myself and the flesh and the blood and the eyes, but I'll try to let the drawing speak for itself for a while.

unidentified

2010-04-22T20:05:00.000-07:00

Sometimes the urge to get something out of my head and onto a piece of paper is overwhelming. So tonight I was there, tearing my crinkled paper and putting it up with duct tape I found in the kitchen.

I had a dream the other night that I kept finding a body covered in horizontal cuts. The memory of picking the limp body out of the dirt was very real. The image of her sliced up legs was very vivid. I don't remember her face or much else about her. The killer knew I would always find her body, so he wanted to kill me too. Things like that aren't as scary in my dreams, because time doesn't always move in a straight line, it skips around. I was trying to lock him out of my house, and I was trying to call the police without him noticing. I always do things like that, and I can't help but see that I even love being sneaky in my dreams.

Work in progress

2010-03-22T14:39:00.000-07:00

I've been working on this piece at home, which has been a lot of fun. Today it reminded me of falling backwards down my friends stairs and cutting the back of my heel as a kid. It was rainy and cloudy like today. All summer sand kept getting in the cut, and it took months to heal. It reminded me of my dream last night, where I pulled a little straw out of my heel. It was folded in half under the skin, and I had been wondering why my foot was bothering me. It reminds me of my numb sleepy hands and the way they don't work in the morning. We'll see where it goes now..
I see a bunch of wiggly strings getting tied up at the ends.

Sleeping Beauty

2010-02-28T13:02:00.000-08:00

Goodnight Sleeping Beauty, This piece SOLD in my last show (coming down this evening). I'm glad she's found a good home. :-)

The Power of Self

2010-02-27T06:09:00.000-08:00

So if you scroll down down down down, you'll see my name, Kathryn LaRanger, as an honorable mention in the "Artists Wanted- The Power of Self" competition. It was a good experience, and I'm hoping to do more juried exhibitions/online art competitions.

http://www.artistswanted.org/self/

New work is on the horizon..

SHOW COMING UP 2.4.10 -111 FRONT ST, BROOKLYN: GALLERY 220

2010-01-27T21:21:00.000-08:00

Fee Fi Fo Fum oil on linen 30"x35"

Next Thursday, February 4th at 111 Front Street in Brooklyn. This show will include myself and 3 other figurative artists, and should be a really fun event.

http://giacobettipaul.com/

The opening will be going on Thursday- 5:30-9pm

Let me know if you can make it!

---

Fee Fi Fo Fum is my latest painting. I still think it could have a ways to go but we'll see-
Blood trapped in the face is a very loaded image for me. It reminds me of being a kid and popping the heads off the dandelions. It reminds me of my humiliation at just being a person, at any hint towards how alive and seething I was. It's hard to live in a social world with rules and cues you have to pick up on. It's the feeling that I had no idea how to be a person- the feeling that everyone else had someone to tell them the secrets to it- the feeling that I was obvious. They can smell the blood in my face, and I am the giant. The idea that I was the clown. The way I wanted to devour everyone, the way I wanted to be ground up hamburger meat. The way I wanted to reveal all my flaws and guts and shit so that I could do it on my own terms.

political vs personal

2010-01-11T17:33:00.000-08:00

When people describe my work as political, I get a little thrown off balance. I think that this is probably because I'm not sure what political means to other people, and what that implies about my art and my motives for making it. My art is intensely personal, and perhaps this makes it political in a way that I am not aware of. However, I am probably one of the least updated people I know when it comes to actual politics, mostly because I find it unbelievably boring and ugly. In my mind politics is a bunch of gross old men feeling very important about themselves, and I couldn't care less. I know that is narrow-minded, but those are the feelings I have about it

I'm interested in the biology of the body, a person's relationship to eating and excreting, and the way their relationships with other's affect them. It's about how it feels to live in a body that is open and constantly taking in and releasing parts of it's environment. My art is very self-centered in this way, and I accept that this is where my interests are.

New framed art!

2009-12-19T17:32:00.000-08:00

Restraint 22"x30"
To me, this piece is about holding it together. Like a towel being wrung out, but trying not to spill any water. Like holding your breath when you hug someone.

REVIEW: AUDREY KAWASAKI

2009-12-13T08:28:00.000-08:00

I give her somewhere between 3 and 4 Stars- Very niiice(in my best borat voice)

This piece (image from audrey-kawasaki.com) "My dishonest heart" was featured in Audrey Kawasaki's latest show(which opened last night). I knew of her because my painting teacher in college, Chris Wright (also had her as a student), recommended that I look at her work. Last night I finally got to see the work in person, and it was a really fabulous show.

To me, this show was fabulous because it was art that looks good(less common than you would think), and it's being done by a young talented lady with an stylized figurative approach.

I relate to her work very much, even though I think we're kind of doing the same thing in opposite ways. Her work is so very pretty that to me it's almost just an example of how pretty a person can make a piece of wood. I love to be aesthetically pleased, so I like her work. They are delicate paintings of girls that look like sleepy, rosy-nosed kittens with dew on their cheeks. She throws in the occasional organ(see above) or skeletal reference, but it's all done in such a clean precise pretty way that it doesn't phase anyone. I think that's cool.

My main issue with Kawasaki's work is that it is so easy to read that I find myself moving on fairly quickly. The work is so clean that I feel like once I've admired it for a few minutes, I start looking for the next piece. The drawings themselves are very straightforward, but she paints them in a very mysterious, luminous style, and I think that is what makes them so desirable.

Yum. Good job.

Fillet

2009-11-09T17:22:00.000-08:00

Fillet: in progress

This is the beginning of my latest creepy pregnancy painting. My ex boyfriend's sister just gave birth (or at least had a baby removed) just the other day, and it just really makes me think about how crazy pregnancy is and how weird and meaty our bodies are. It makes me think about little babies growing in between strips of fillet mignon. Raw moving muscle meat. People get to hang out on the inside of other people for a while, and then when they're ripe they get taken out, and the whole thing is amazing and gross and beautiful. It seems very sloppy and real, and I think stuff like that is great. It pulls us into a place that's different than the day to day job society shopping thing(which I also think is fun).

Womb

This is another piece in this realm that I think is about done. It was inspired by my frustrations with birth control. Both idealogically and practically. I don't like that my body has it's own agenda that I'm not involved in, and I don't like that in order to not be a baby-machine, I need to be on medication and change my hormones. I'm also frustrated at how full of rage this hormone-fiddling makes me. Blinding, vein-popping, blood-curdling rage. Sometimes I feel like reaching into my stomach, ripping out all my organs, and eating them. That's the feeling.

line equality

2009-11-07T20:32:00.000-08:00

The more I let myself draw the way I like to draw, the more I learn about myself from my drawings. I am pretty fundamentally against erasing, and have only really given into it when I felt embarrassed by something that's really terribly drawn. I love going over every accidental line and every mistake and every wrong path until they're all of equal importance. It seems like the more I make everything uniform, the more interesting things jump out at me. I love going over every line of a drawing without thinking about the actual thing I'm drawing. Then sometimes I go over things until there're dead, but I'm always working on knowing when to stop and what to leave.

I've been doing a lot of work in my room for the last week or so. My job has been keeping me busy and overwhelmed, but I love it so I can't complain too much. It's interesting to be working in the privacy of my own room again for a bit. I've missed it a little to be honest.

Happy Halloween!

2009-11-02T17:59:00.001-08:00

Corporeality opening Oct. 17th

2009-10-13T15:37:00.001-07:00

Corporeality

October 17-November 15, 2009
Opening Reception: Saturday, Oct 17th 7-9 PM
Bushwick Crawl: Saturday, Oct 24th, 6-10PM

Lumenhouse exhibition space is pleased to present Corporeality. Co-curated by Aurora Robson and Mariko Tanaka, this exhibition features works by four emerging figurative artists: Katharyn LaRanger, Jon Nissenbaum, Emily Orling, and Stephen Workman.

The work in Corporeality examines states of the physical self through transfiguration and metamorphosis of the corporeal body. Katharyn LaRanger’s works on paper veil a seething emotional intensity in her intricate compositions of women's bodies. Jon Nissenbaum’s oil painting, Shreveport Woman, renders a real life news story of police brutality into a haunting modern day portrait. Emily Orling’s darkly evocative work explores the synergy of Siamese twins. Stephen Workman portraits of entwined bodies explore the physical elements of the human form.

For more information visit: lumenhouse.com or call 718-942-5395, or contact: Aurora Robson T: 718.942.5395 E: info@lumenhouse.com.

DIRECTIONS

There are driving directions on their website, but if you'd taking the subway, it looks like you have to tke the j to flushing. Exit near intersection of Broadway and Flushing Ave. Start out going east on Flushing Ave. then turn right onto Beaver Street.

Princesses

2009-09-28T19:59:00.000-07:00

My princess series springs from the idea of the perfect woman, and the way women are portrayed as role models in today's society. The princess is beautiful and quiet and submissive. She takes what punishment she is given because she knows she deserves it. She is waiting for her prince to find her. She can't walk, she can't speak, and people look up to her because they feel bad for her, and they admire her self-restraint. She is always sorry, and she is always beautiful.

The idea that women should be clean and small and mutable really speaks to me of the power they must have. Women are fleshy, walking, talking, human-making machines, and all things fertile are also dirty, bloody, and open. There is no privacy in womanhood, and that idea is not always an easy thing to deal with.