Kathleen Jacobs: SOARS
Heather Gaudio Fine Art • New Canaan, CT • heathergaudiofineart.com • May 8–June 19, 2021
The sublime and transcendent paintings of Kathleen Jacobs are produced via a method involving the traditional materials of oil paint and linen canvas, yet are fully realized through collaboration with the natural environment and time. This is profoundly demonstrated in the exhibition Kathleen Jacobs: SOARS at Heather Gaudio Fine Art. Upon entering the gallery, the viewer is pulled into the energy and movement embodied by the interplay of line, surface, and color of the works collectively, as well as being drawn to the meditative quality of the individual paintings.
Early in Jacobs’ career she spent four years living in Beijing and Hong Kong, where she studied and perfected Chinese calligraphy. This daily practice of mark making, and a relationship with Eastern philosophies, would ultimately influence and enrich the defining works seen here. Jacobs’ artistic process, which she first explored while living in Aspen, CO, upon returning to the U.S., involves tightly wrapping and stapling thinly painted linen canvas vertically around a tree trunk. The artist then rubs the canvas with paint and oil stick multiple times over a period of months, and even years, creating a layered and textured surface. The resulting shapes, formed by the contours of the tree bark underneath, are transformed by the artist’s ongoing application of pigment, and the weathering of the paint and canvas by the elements. When completed, each canvas is turned so the forms flow horizontally.
The painting titled SOARS, with its layers of white paint on a brilliant blue ground, is a notable example of Jacobs’ technique and its stunning result. The myriad textures, varied thickness, and shifts in tone of the marks compel one to examine the work closely, while alternately stepping back to engage with the overall essence of the composition. The horizontal orientation of the forms generates a sensation of moving water, or scudding clouds, while remaining abstract. It is worth mentioning that the five-letter painting titles, and the name of the exhibition, are navigational fixes, or coordinates, used by pilots. These markers have significance for Jacobs, who, since moving to Massachusetts, has become an aerobatic pilot. A correlation between an aerial view and the elements of landscape reflected in these paintings seems unmistakable.
—Suzanne Julig