KATHERINE LUBAR

'I seek to explore the different methods of visual perception which exist just beneath the surface of our common visual reality. I look at reflections, shadows, light patterns and negative space which are all a part of our everyday visual experience yet remain, for the most part ignored. I choose to focus on these entities as my subject matter, making them the main characters in their own stories. They are fictionalised to some extent as no shadow is so sharply defined, and no negative space so playfully coloured. However, by exaggerating their details, I hope to show how beautiful these marvels of nature can be. To me, negative space, light patterns, and shadows are just as important as the physical space they inhabit. If we are looking around us, our eyes cannot feel the difference between what is physical and what is intangible. It is only because we have been trained to know that we can put our hand through a shadow but not a wall that we ascribe a certain importance to the wall and not the shadow. In a painting, a shadow has the same tangibility as a wall, no matter how dextrously an artist creates an illusion with paint. Shadows and walls are made of the same substance. I think it is important to recognize this in a painting. I have become increasingly interested in formal elements such as geometrical shapes and patterns. I like to emphasize the similarity of different forms as well as the difference between similar forms. I have become increasingly interested in colour as my work progresses and there has been a shift away from naturalistic colour towards very bright, unnatural colours. Each hue has been chosen with great precision in terms of how it relates to all the others in the painting and in some cases, colour is used to help create a sense of pattern.'