end of summer reflection /  by Kaylee Warner

Mostly, I learned that art is healing. Art is power; it is something that flows through me. I've learned a lot about listening to what it has to say - because it is not a part of me. It speaks when it wants, and to hear/see what needs to be created takes listening/looking in. That is the guide and I am following blindly and I feel good about it. 

I have slowed down my painting process a lot. Starting the summer off with collage was helpful to think of layer and hierarchy, etc. It was also an investigation into found material and well as ideas about excess and degradation as intertwined processes. It also helped me to think about Embodied Landscapes as something that exists as an entity - the body is not different from and cannot be separated/removed from the place/environment that it exists within. Hence why my work is starting to exist in more abstract spaces.

I've developed my process so that I start with a thin Gamsol (solvent) wash that I violently throw and splash on the canvas; it allows for a world to start melting into being. This dripping effect helps me created the degraded environment. The violent nature of this act is purposeful, not only as a means for my own body to release energy, but it reflects the way the environment has been treated, often without thought of as a being and stolen from by the hands of greed. That is how the environment that we live in today was formed and therefore how I allow my space to emerge.

I can then start placing figures in, the people who still occupy this wretched Earth. They barely have form because they are barely here. The scars of their past still remaining & haunting them - and for that I use tools to scrap them away because fuck them. Fuck what has happened, what is happening and what will happen. 

I tell the stories of these people. Some of my pieces are more figurative than others, some of the stories are clearer than others as they are already happening. Sea level rise, superstorms, resource depletion, and climate refugees are more figurative because I can source reference photos from the news, current events of climate change. The story is unfolding in front of our eyes. Other pieces that are more abstract perhaps have a more vague sense of time (and event), could be the future, past or present - any option works, and it doesn't really matter. Its the sentiment of degradation, collapse and rebirth that I'm after. 

Ultimately the story ends how it started, the environment destroys them. Yet, despite all this chaos, I still find reason to celebrate as I use bright, saturated colors All hope is not lost and humans will continue on within their own experience to the very core - dancing and singing regardless of how bad it gets. I think its important to understand this harmony between seemingly disparate worlds. One time, a teacher asked, "what does it mean to be living on a dying planet?" Part of the answer incorporates beauty. I still find beauty all around me. Beauty as an aesthetic appeal but moreover beauty as a way of life/being. I've come to find that death and decomposition are beautiful processes - aesthetically? perhaps no, but as a means for converting one life to another, passing vitality along? extremely. I find solace in that - knowing that something will come after all this, life will persist, with or without humans. And the landscape - the built and unbuilt cultural landscape will die too. It's death and burial back into the Earth will be alongside its creators - and hey, maybe its better that way. 

 

its august and the trees are dying /  by Kaylee Warner

Walking up Columbia street the other day, the street was covered in brown, crumbled dead leaves. I looked up and all the leaves were on their way out. It felt like fall... in August?

That impending sense of doom that is consistently getting stronger in my life arrived yet again. 

The trees are dying, the sun's heat is getting stronger. It rains and it pours and my phone flashes with messages of another flash flood. 

Another message flashes, POTUS is tweeting again. 

here I am and my phone keeps flashing. 

I keep scrolling to make it go away.

I keep painting to make it go away. 

I keep dancing to make it go away -- dancing in the hot sun, 

asphault under my feet 

I know it is still coming, the trees are still dying

mid summer thoughts /  by Kaylee Warner

embodied landscape: to give a body to (or spirit) all the visible features of an area or land, often considered in terms of their aesthetic appeal. 

Earth and human are one. Everything that is human comes from and belongs to the Earth. Our stories and pasts are told in the shapes and scars of the landscape. When we die, our bodies return to the Earth. In most simple of terms, we cannot exist without the Earth; Earth gives us life.

We experience aliveness through our own aliveness, our body. We know we are alive as we feel blood rushing through our veins, oxygen flowing through our lungs and as our hearts pulsate; we know the Earth is alive as rivers rush to the ocean, as trees bloom with leaves and magma boils below the surface. Aliveness is interwoven and moves through all things. 

To exist as a human means to modify and create. Modify here does not necessarily carry negative connotations, but to be alive requires interaction with and consumption of the environment. Therefore, altering landscapes is inherent to humanity's existence. The question at play is about how far we have taken this practice and the widespread and pervasive environmental predicaments these alterations have caused. 

We have reached a point where our government is a corporation, our education is a product, and our bodies are commodities; the landscape is mechanized, the soul is dying. 

"the imperative to be beautiful often creates astonishing ugliness" 

 

The ideal /  by Kaylee Warner

Our biggest desire culturally is for an ideal body. We are constantly subjected to images, reminders, of how we should look as either a man or a woman, and the products that we can use to change our bodies to look that way. Man and woman are constructed as opposite, mutually exclusive and very small spheres of very specific, narrow qualifications. Men with muscles, women with hourglass frame –- both with sculpted faces, soft, often white skin, brilliant white teeth... on and on and on it goes. 

The famous people that fill tabloid magazines/main-stream media uphold and reinforce these looks. These are the ideal bodies of our culture. Because they possess the ideal body, they can become famous; because they are famous, they can possess the ideal body. Either way their possession of the ideal body and consequent fame allows them to profit of it. 

Another layer of cultural idealism is then added, excessive wealth. The famous people that fill visual media also uphold and reinforce consumption patterns. They show us what is cool to wear, trendiest places to travel, best food to eat, etc. Turns out the masses never have the right clothes, don't drive the right cars -- simply do not have enough stuff/money. Yet, if we buy more stuff, change ourselves, we too, can become a better -- more attractive, cool, powerful, and beautiful version of ourselves.

We too can achieve the ideal body. We too can achieve the ideal wealth. We too can achieve the American Dream.

Welcome /  by Kaylee Warner

The blog portion of my website is going to be dedicated to documenting my process and (for lack of a less corny word) journey this summer as I venture through the world of being a full-time artist. I start next week, stay tuned :-)