Katie Meuser 2016 – Diving In to Vibrant Mixed Organic Abstracts
Growth in Chicago. A visual artist exploring curves.
“It kind of snowballed immediately. So I was excited - that’s why my color choices were very vibrant. I was happy I was showing, doing what I wanted to do.”
2016 was Katie’s second year in Chicago. One year past her time in Nebraska, she was eager to push into new spaces and take advantage of Chicago’s welcoming and experimental spirit. Her interests center around contrasting organic forms, adding objects into the same plane as the non-objective. She wanted to juxtapose recognizable objects like bodies, trees, and flowers, with the shapes created by water flow, gravity, air, and time.
Chicago – A supportive environment for artists
“Chicago is amazing. It’s just like open arms, letting me in.”
Katie moved to Chicago and quickly found her work was welcome. She had several showings booked in a short period of time – New Wave, Filter cafe, a gallery called Positive Space and another in Lake Forest all opened their doors and promoted her artwork.
Chicago was so welcoming to art, and that was something so different. Nebraska’s very welcoming as well but it’s really hard to get into an art community in Lincoln. In Chicago, I was getting shows right away and people were responding to it, responding well to it. I thought, Chicago is amazing. It’s just like, open arms, letting me in.
But even though Chicago was super welcoming, there were some challenges. The kind of work she did was considered “spill art”. As if she just spilled some paint on canvas and saw what happened. As if she wasn’t really thinking through each choice.
Color: Acrylic, added to water creates a lot of organic movement in a painting
The playground was ink vs. acrylic. With watered-down acrylics (aka watercolors), you lose a lot of pigment. The colors aren’t as vibrant. Katie adds layers and layers and layers to get that vibrancy. But with ink, the medium is still watery, but *super* vibrant. Of course, because it's a different substance, it presents different challenges. But those challenges lead to new discoveries.
Figures: Alexis, Christopher & Samantha
“I was exploring a new genre and putting figures in it.”
“Alexis”, 2016. Acrylic, ink & water
Katie took on the challenge of creating figures. She pushed her boundaries as an artist and improved in a new area.
Alexis
The first challenge was the body. Katie brought the body into a non-objective space, which allowed her to play with the experience of living with curves. Size, shading, proportions, were the basis, but the non-objective elements add in the experience of the body.
The curve and the stretch of the body is swaddled with an explosion of shadow and color. It draws your eye to the twist of the waist, the curve of the hip – the feeling that is ecstatic. The feeling nearly eclipses the form, but not quite.
As you can see from the tryptic above, the form without the abstraction floats without a story. None of us really exist without a story, without a context, without a life. By visualizing the intangible emotion of being, Katie captures the form and the experience in a single frame.
“With a woman it is so much easier because I know the curves inside and out because I’ve lived it.”
“Christopher”, 2016. Acrylic, ink & water
Christopher
This figure was Katie’s first male figure that she’s not used to them. This figure is more androgenous, suggesting masculinity but also the playfulness of muscles, confidence, and strength.
On using figures, she says
Adding an object into my nonobjective abstract seemed to be the next best thing. I never did figures before so I kind of want to see if I could do them and how well they would go with abstract. I think the juxtaposition of having an organic watery shape that it’s organic because that’s how water dries, and then having an organic shape that’s the human figure, so also organic but so different. They go so well together.
Contrast: Learning new ways to work with acrylic paint on canvas
In this watercolor painting by Katie Meuser, you can see the intentional movement and flow of the work. There is a lot of organic movement from the water, but you can also see the work of the artist. Katie Meuser creates a lemniscate flow. She uses her full body as she works, and you can feel her movement as you look at the painting.
“Vivian”, 2016. Acrylic, Ink & Water.
Working with intention and flow
Katie painted Vivian on a table. According to her,
I had a table and it was actually level which never happens to me. The floors are always kind of a little bit off so the water just kind of flows where it wants to flow. So this one I did on a table and the paint was just staying perfectly still. It wouldn’t run anywhere because it was so level. I was just trying to push it around with my hand and come up with a really nice composition. There was ink in it too, so I blew it with a straw made like an infinity sign. It was very purposeful, because the water was not moving, the table was so flat. I created the flow myself.
Going further with creating intentional flow, Katie experimented more with ink. She used straws to create swirls and knots on the canvas, using air in addition to water and gravity to create a flow. “I was letting it dry, and then putting some water on it. It expands but it still keeps part of the shape that you created with the straw, so i was playing around with that and I thought they looked like knots on a tree so I just went with it and so the trees came out. I was letting the canvas kind of take me on a journey
Challenging the visual – Moving past the term “spill artist”
In the time she’s worked as a visual artist, Katie’s felt there was a bit of a hierarchy. Abstract is sometimes considered to be on the low end, as if things just happen or appear on canvas. Nothing could be further from the truth. Each stroke is intentional, the colors placed to evoke a mood.