CathyJean Clark

Artist Statement

Artist Statement

I believe the United States is a very special place, evident by its beautiful landscape. Living in rural Wisconsin gives me many opportunities to experience spiritual and mystical forces that I find in this beautiful world. I am interested in how these experiences express themselves in me with a connection to the earth, land and sky. Through my work I hope to express to the viewer these experiences.

Gardens are very important to our landscape. They are still important to so many people, including myself. There seems to be many deep archetypal connections to the garden that we are not aware of consciously and do not fully understand and comprehend. I believe the “Garden” to be how we physically and spiritually connect to the earth. It is our psychic umbilical cord to our planet.

The sense of rhythm in my work is to express the cycles that are an integral part of nature and so common to life itself, the rhythm of birth, life, fruition, death, decay and rebirth, matter being transformed from one form to another. The darkness is to communicate that there is so much more to life than what we see with our eyes, it suggests us to travel from the conscious to the unconscious worlds. We need to engage all our senses, even senses that we may not be aware of at this time to see beyond the physical world.

I, like Emerson, realize that there is much more to nature than one often sees. In “Nature” Ralph Waldo Emerson writes: “Standing on the bare ground my head bathed by the blight air, and uplifted into infinite space - All mean egotism vanishes. I become a transparent eyeball. I am nothing, I see all, the current of the Universal being circulated through me. I am part or parcel of God.”

CathyJean Clark

Biography

Biography

CathyJean Clark lives and works in rural Central Wisconsin on an original farmstead near the beautiful Black River. She works fulltime in a small functioning intaglio studio, Hummingbird Press, http://www.hummingbirdpress.org, which is located on the farm, steps from her farmhouse.

She received a BFA in Drawing and Prints from the University of Wisconsin Eau- Claire and an MFA in Printmaking from University of Wisconsin - Milwaukee.
She has exhibited in numerous juried, invitational and solo exhibits in the United States and has exhibited with the International Print Center New York, NY with a special showing of the exhibit at Christie’s, Rockefeller Plaza, Ny and at the Scuola Internazionale di Grafica, Venice Italy with LAP exchange during the Venice Biennial 2015.

She also is in a number of private and public collections including the University of Wisconsin – Madison, University of Wisconsin- Milwaukee, The Woodland Project of Matyas Kiraly, Hungary, Marshfield Clinic, Marshfield, WI. Kochi Musuem, Kochi, Japan and Lincoln Financial, IN.

Her work focuses on mixed media intaglio works along with mixed media drawings. The work expresses the spiritual and mystical forces that she experiences as nature. There is an inner spirit that permeates all of life and she feels a profound connection to this spirit. Living in rural Wisconsin gives her many opportunities to have these experiences and she believes Wisconsin is a very special place, evident by its beauty.

Exhibition History (CV)