Kim Ouellette

Region: South

 These works represent acts of improvisation through a formal language. If they contain narrative, it is fleeting, individual to the viewer. I want the viewer to have a moment of surprise and delight from these works: like finding something unusual in nature, not expected and moving. I want them to have familiarity and newness at the same time.

Laying lines down across the canvas is for me a physical act, a bodily relationship to the canvas’s materiality and space, experimenting with different brushes and hand pressure without planning or overt intentionality. The space created is both meditative and unresolved––something I can react to, improvise with. I develop a relationship with each work’s formal elements. I try to find and then “mess up” any narrative.

I am acutely aware that I have been exploring the act of making lines in my work for the last two decades. I explore how line cohabits with shape and color on the canvas.