A few years ago I decided to challenge the comfortable spot I'd found myself in: painting everything just the way it looked! The representational approach began to bore me and, after much experimentation, I found that I wasn't any good at pure abstraction. Therefore, I tried to find a way to move in the direction of abstraction while keeping one foot in realism. That is, I found a way to bridge the gap. One day I took some eggs out of the frig and starting cracking them. As I piled up the empty shells on the counter I realized they made the most unusual designs as they lay together ... and ... voila! an idea was born. I quickly ran to the grocery store next door and bought dozens of eggs. After uncrating them into a tray in my back yard, I whacked them all with a hammer (that was actually fun! - release of pentup frustration - I recommend this as therapy to anyone). After rinsing the shells, I arranged them all sorts of ways so the sun would highlight certain areas and shadow others as part of the design. Then I photographed my arrangements from different angles and edited the photos, manipulating them, on photoshop on my computer. I used those designs as the basis for my paintings, but continued to make alterations to the designs as I transferred them to the canvas or watercolor paper. Once I had the design I liked, I turned my attention to my palette. The challenge was to created interesting designs with color, which meant I had to avoid local color. So far, I've completed about tweny eggshell paintings in watercolor, one large triptych "Fragments of Life" in oils (it's 4 feet by 6 feet) and got really carried away when I painted "Eggsistential" which is acrylic on canvas and measures 4 feet by 16 feet! I recieved a grant from the New York Foundation for the Arts to support an exhibition at the Grosvenor Gallery at SUNY and hung all the works together. Many of the watercolors have hung in national juried exhibitions and won awards, so other people are enjoying them, too. You might think I've grown tired of painting eggshells, but I haven't! I have many ideas to move this series forward into another dimension. This is what keeps painting a joyful experience.

If you'd like to see more, please visit my website:  www.kacartwright.com, and please send me your comments!

- Kathy