My work is inspired by my experiences, the people in my life, and my memories. Some works reflect my own personal narrative, while others are motivated by events in contemporary news and are meant to employ conversations across the table. They become translations of the human experience. Moments in time; moments in history; moments in my history. Using photographic imagery has allowed me to mark this time, this experience, and these memories. As I design, every layer, shape, pattern, color, and design choice has a purpose and a meaning. I strive to also create work that will intrigue others with visual sophistication. The size, colors, and patterns are meant to draw the viewer in and capture their attention. The multiple layers of the pattern interact with each other to create a textural relief and visual resonance across the weavings. They invite the viewer to explore the composition and details both from a distance and up close, engaging them in the richness of the physical plane unique to the art of weaving.

Color arrives before thought. It works ahead of the intellect and before the mind can process and assign meaning. My paintings are made through color field and abstract expressionist practice in conversation with the work itself, in a flow state that listens rather than directs. I paint what comes through, then fine-tune to clarify and amplify. Each work is made to meet the viewer where they are, not to prescribe an experience but to offer a field where different viewers take what they need. Influenced by Jungian psychology and over twenty years of practice, my work makes the invisible visible. At the heart of every piece: an “I see you”, what is felt but rarely named. Autobiographical in origin, universal in experience, and speaking to what we all carry: loss, transformation, endurance, the persistence of the life force in difficult conditions. Living Breathing Color.

Cathryn Baerwald is an emerging artist. Over the past two years, she has been committed to exploring her artistic voice and has found that she loves the texture that can be created through mixed media, and bold colors, and naturally tends to include a narrative in her pieces. Her personal introspection allows her to express and elicit an emotional response through her work.

Her inspiration comes from exploring the natural world and being part of a rich farm community. For hours she can be found wandering around the valley fields where she lives or the forest nearby and what might seem like doing nothing turns into a sense of belonging to another world full of colors and textures. This is later translated into her art. Being part of a farm community, Cathryn sees the resilience of people, the hardship, the gains and losses that come with each season, and over time a profound respect for life itself has been gleaned. Her art comes from this place of respect that has been built and explored in her art.

Cathryn works predominately on wood panels with oil paint and collage. It is common for her to include a gold halo around her subjects to express her view that all of life is to be revered and to allow the viewers the opportunity to consider what they find reverence in.

In the last three decades, I have been creating wall-mounted, cast resin, and aluminum sculptures combined with canvas and gold leaf, and exploring the computer as an art tool for creating digital artwork.

All my life, I have loved to create art full of emotions and feelings, “soul,” with the satisfaction of fun. I am interested in the balance and composition of colors and objects rather than the reality of the items.

The direction of the last two decades has been aimed at understanding and, through artwork, expressing the human struggle of emotions and adaptations. For the past ten years, I have been polishing my creative work in the Surreal-abstract style.

The main motto of my artwork is: Just as in a good story, the readers have space to create their image; in a good picture, the viewers can form their own account.

There is nothing so exciting as a blank canvas and an image before me that needs to be painted. It makes my soul so happy to be in that place. There has to be something exciting about the subject that appeals to me, that makes me want to paint it. Be it the subject, the lighting, the atmosphere, the composition, the colors, or the emotional appeal.

I usually start with a quick charcoal sketch to lay down the composition and design of the painting and establish lights and darks. Next, I cover the canvas with paint. Ahh. But after that, the struggle begins. Bringing the painting from the basic concept to the finished piece is not always easy. Fortunately, most of the time I’m happy with the finished painting. So from happy. To a struggle. To happy again. That’s my process.

Art brings beauty to the community. Whether it’s music, dance, paintings, sculpture, photography, or nature doing its thing. Art is truly all around, but it is the community’s responsibility to pause and take it in, support and encourage. Pause and experience the art, feel the art, and be the art. Art is created by the artist, it takes the patron and the community to embrace, appreciate and discuss. No matter what type of art, beauty comes from the soul of the artist. A soul that has experienced joy, sorrow, pain, love, laughter, staring over but most importantly that soul has taken a chance on themselves.

Art creates connections and conversations. Connections with others in galleries, museums, and lobbies of performance halls as the patrons wait with anticipation and excitement for the performance and shared experiences. The connections with people open conversation, discussion, dialogue, or exchange of ideas. Everyone experiences art in their own way sharing their thoughts about art with others promotes further inspiration and creativity. With so much of the world at our fingertips, art gives us a momentary (hopefully longer) pause, to create personal connections through conversations with others as the art is experienced.

Supporting the arts builds character, and art takes most people out of their comfort zones as they broaden their horizons. By supporting the arts, you encourage individual artists to push themselves out of their own comfort zones, to keep dreaming, connecting, conversing, and to keep creating. The art community is growing and will continue to flourish as the community experiences the arts, talks about the arts, and continues to support the arts. Enjoy the beauty, establish a connection, and start a conversation with the artists who bring art to life.

I am motivated to paint and draw through my observations, taking photos of images that inspire me, and/or drawing sketches where I am at a particular time. I enjoy looking at paintings of different artists and admire how they accomplished the look they wanted. These are preliminary steps to starting a new piece.

I use various media, including oils, acrylics, watercolors, inks, and pastels, and decide on which to use based on what would best work in that art and based on the image I am trying to capture. Research is a big part of many of my works, such as the structure of boats, the anatomy of a person or animal, or the parts of various flowers and how they grow. I pride myself on the ability to mix colors and achieve a specific feeling in the paintings that I aim for. I study the lines in a painting, the darks, lights, and contrasts, and the organization and crossing of lines and shapes. Sometimes I am very calculating in a piece, measuring proportions and perspective, and other times I freely draw an image, such as when I’m on a bench in Amsterdam or at a concert.

Each piece that I do reflects my understanding of the place, object, or person, sharing its beauty visually.

Acrylic paint allows an automatic application and response with scribbled marks or color swatches. My imagery consists of the lyric elements of line and the illusory sense of space through clouded form and color. The line is animate, changing width and length, mingling with little objects marking the surface in a diversity of forms. The bright color and metallic paint attract, becoming both introduction and common ground between the viewer and me. Adding to this chaotic maelstrom, the stability of hard-edged shapes gives a sense of order, establishing a physical presence within the picture plane.

Like many of the early surrealists, I explore subjective realities as a doorway into the mercurial realm of the metaphysical. Quoting Kandinsky, “creation of a work is creation of a world,” in such a fashion, I paint little worlds described in the universal language of the abstract.

I have been painting the outside environment for many years. It changes to reflect the many places that I have lived. The added “little people” explain the painting’s story through their actions and joy spent with friends and family doing normal things in their lives.

I hope that the stories bring back some hidden memories of childhood that we all have made in our imagination.
The background of my paintings is Hawaiian flora.

I also starting to delve into areas of overpopulation, Hawaii volcanos, Kalo’olawe destruction from the war, and population incarceration on Kalaupapa.

Therefore, my resume as an artist is short.