Kristen Calcaterra

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Artist's Statement

email:kristencalcaterra@gmail.com

My work centers on the presence of violence, disease and unfortunate living conditions in an otherwise beautifully and meticulously crafted home. I was born and raised in Virginia in a town named after the plantation on which it was built.

Our home, much like the local historic structures, embodied an ideal. Throughout my childhood my mother transformed our house into a sort of shrine to how a home "should" look. Through years of AIDS, Cancer, and Alzheimer's we filled our home with fluted candlesticks and polished copper. The presence of disease gradually undermined the authenticity of the ornamental perfection.

I employ different levels of detail and rendering within my paintings. This allows my work to reveal the breakdown of reality and lucidity based on observation. I am interested in creating work that refers to the "real", the illusion, and the toxic condition of the home under the strains of disease. Through paint pours, line, distortions of accurate rendering, and removal of the image I create layered paintings which obscure and reveal their histories through process and image.

As the home environments in my paintings are threatened by the visual breakdown of reality, they are dissolved and reduced into abstraction (if not eliminated entirely). Different languages of mark-making in painting allow me to fragment reality, and present the home under the pressures of the unknown that overwhelm it.

My intention is to provide a window into this idea of the ornamented home and my exploration of it, once threatened. The representation of the delicately established home as being exposed and eliminated by this overwhelming, toxic entity can allow for the viewer to fill in the blanks within the context of, perhaps, their own experience.

Contact email - kristencalcaterra@gmail.com