Friday, 20 December 2013

Becoming Kathy Durst Artist By Viewing Her Work

By Marcia Marks


Kathy Durst artist was educated at the University of Texas at Austin. Born in Redwing, Minnesota, she grew up in Rockford, Illinois and went to an all-girls school. She has a Bachelor's Degree in Fine Arts and an all-level teaching certificate in Visual Arts. Having retired from teaching, Kathy was invited to display a selection of pieces from her ark-full of painted collages at her first solo show at the Ross Gallery in 2014.

A quarter of a century of teaching art has exposed the artist to almost every conceivable medium and technique. A lot of her work that is currently available for viewing online is paper painting collage stuff. Her "Lammie" is a great example of what can be achieved with creative use of scraps of paper and paint.

"Lammie" and "Yulka" illustrate what can be achieved by creatively employing paint and carefully selected scraps of paper. In "Yulka, " we see an empty soft drink bottle showing through a floral patterned swimsuit for flotation. This is a very deft application of the collage painting technique.

The materials are readily available and inexpensive and the techniques can be taught to preschoolers. With her 25 years' experience and maturity, Ms Durst produces some complex and ingeniously patterned results. It is easy to find tutorials of collage methods on the Internet. If you really want to understand the artist, it is worth spending some time getting to know the medium.

Most of the subjects of Durst's work that you will find involve animals; this is the theme of her Ross Gallery exposition. In the whimsical, "Take Me Along, " you see two scuba divers working their way through a sea of atlas cuttings and musical notes. They look really happy. Try THAT with a set of watercolors and paper.

View this artist's work at your own peril and be prepared to spend time and money experimenting with your own painted paper collage artistry. It is positively inspiring. Seriously, just watching someone do it on YouTube is entrancing.

Durst's "Rose" is absolutely breathtaking. Coral tones of the blossom itself are picked out in the distant foliage. You will have to pinch yourself to be convinced it is not a photograph. It is difficult to tell what medium the artist employed. It does not appear to be a paper painted collage but with her talent and vision, it very well could be.

Kathy Durst artist's use of stencils and textured paper in her collages gives her work depth and character. For most of the rest of us, our results would turn out more like a hastily put together Mothers Day present. Find out the date of her next show and pencil it in. You are going to want to pay her a visit.




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