This week, we welcome Catie Dillon, a painter based in Brooklyn, New York. Dillon received her BFA from Penn State University and her MFA from Hunter College. Her work has been exhibited in solo shows at the McDonough Museum of Art in Youngstown, Ohio and Woskob Family Gallery in State College, Pennsylvania. Dillon has also been featured in group exhibitions in New York, Pennsylvania, Kentucky, Italy and Portugal. She has been an artist-in-residence at Open Wabi Residency in Fredericktown, Ohio, Fish Factory Residency in Stodvarfjordur, Iceland, PADA Studios in Barreiro, Portugal, Wassaic Project in Wassaic, New York and Project Art Residency in New York, New York.
“Ivory Black. This is the color that I see when I open my eyes towards the night sky. I also see this color when my eyes are closed, turned back to the void within. In ‘Sea and Fog,’ poet and painter Etel Adnan writes, ‘In space’s obscurity our eyes, created by the sun, fail us. They share the fate of our organs which are resigned to living in darkness.’ If these spaces of darkness were illuminated by a flicker of light, what mysteries would unfold? Are there stars in my stomach, perforating my intestines? Would their atmosphere swell and swirl as one, churning my belly? Would gravity disappear as my eyes play tricks in their failure to focus? These are the questions that I ask of painting. And in return, painting, with its slippery alchemical properties, reveals the answers.
“My paintings begin from the same point of genesis, expanding and evolving as one. After an initial acrylic pour, blank surfaces kiss, leaving imprints and lapping up stagnant puddles. Drips run off one canvas to splatter another. There is a leakiness to material, process and image as gesture accumulates, obscures, blurs and fades. Form is derived from the investigation of weather systems, refracting sunlight, shapeshifting amoebae, constellations, plant networks and the body’s internal void. By extracting and abstracting this subject matter, I grapple with ideas of unity, interconnectedness, and my place within the endless expanse.
Relying on my arm to make a confident gesture becomes a significant force when so much of my chronically ill body lacks that same strength. The hand, both its physical motion and visual trace, takes on new meanings of autonomy and forward momentum. Though gesture is compacted and contained, there is always a way through the maze, leading your eye to the background’s light.”
