Color Balance: Art by Catherine Radix Mansell
Catherine Radix Mansell works with a variety of delicate media including inks and encaustic. The artist’s works are often created in the style of traditional Japanese ink paintings, with great attention to negative space and color balance.
I really enjoy the works in Catherine’s Sumi-e gallery. The title of the series refers to the Japanese term for this style of ink wash painting, and the artist’s works are lovely contemporary examples of the practice. Catherine tends to work with floral figures in these paintings, and most of her paintings are composed with a simple, central figure surrounded by white space. This simplicity creates a peaceful, meditative tone for most of the images.
The front page of Catherine's art portfolio website
In her Mythical Archetypes series, Catherine takes a more experimental approach. It looks like the artist brings encaustic medium into play in this series, and the resulting works are much stronger and more heavily textured than her ink paintings. I enjoy the depth of color that Catherine achieves through her encaustics, similar to the work of Lisa Printz.
