Gesture as An Object: Art by Kiki McGrath
Mixed-media artist and painter Kiki McGrath creates colorful works with a focus on gesture as an object. In many of Kiki’s most recent works, swirling, tangled lines of paint take on the role of a central figure, blending with backgrounds both analogous and contrastive.
I appreciate the way Kiki is using her current practice to explore the material of paint – not just what paint can help depict, but how paint itself behaves when applied to a canvas. In the series Aerial Roots, Kiki titles her works with reference to land masses and natural formations, leading the viewer to read more into her color choices (lush greens accented with deeper tones of blue and purple), while at the same time examining the power of a single painted gesture to suggest a recognizable form.
The front page of Kiki's art portfolio website
Kiki’s recent works remind me a bit of paintings by Josh Smith, where the artist focuses on the painted lines of letterforms, abstracting them past recognition. Kiki takes this a step further in Helicon, where she explores differences and relationships between types of lines.
