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The paintings
of Austin artist, Kathy Dickinson bring the viewer into the natural environment
of the shores of Lake Travis and the Lower Colorado River.
She begins by walking the shoreline,
picking up stones, shells, and pieces of driftwood. In her studio she then
creates a setting that will repeat the beauty of these natural forms by staining
a wood panel so that the patterns of the wood grains may reappear as waves, or
rippled sand or as the feathers of the Great Blue Heron hiding in marsh grasses.
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Kathy always paints to music,
especially the music of Bach, so those rhythms also influence her finished work.
A feather or stone or piece of wood may be nestled in the painted surface, its
new environment. Some sand mixed with glue may become part of the scene.
 “Nature
is not just scenery, it is where your life comes from. We have gotten away from
who we are as natural beings. We are so busy staying alive we forget why we
live. We long for harmony, beauty, connection and community. My mission as an
artist is to make people more aware of themselves as natural beings related to
environment, to help city-folk be more open to nature. I have always been a
country seeker.” These statements reveal Kathy’s deep motives as an artist.
This awareness that humans can become
separated from nature began as a child when she had to move from California to
the suburbs of Chicago, and later as she taught young men who were inmates in a
Kansas prison. “They were so hungry to understand life, so teachable, and yet,
some would be released, only to return” She also worked as an advocate for
abused children. Five years of this added up to burnout, and Kathy returned to
her youthful dream of becoming an artist.
She turned to her earlier interests in
weaving, interior design, and textile art, and to the influences of family
members who sculpted and created jewelry. Her degree in Anthropology had
prepared her for deep awareness of humans and their relationship to the natural
world.
She has been a full-time working artist for
twelve years. Kathy’s spiritual source for her work is her lifelong joy in wild
places and their fragile creatures. Her intellectual sources include her
background in anthropology and her awareness of how evolutionary forces sculpt
each living thing and its interaction with all other life. The heart of her
work is her obsession with restoring habitat that supports wildlife.
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can see from her kitchen table Golden Cheeked Warblers, Black capped Vireos, and
other birds at feeders in a small tree. She can see beyond to once over grazed
land that is being restored to its natural state. When you view her paintings,
she brings you into her natural habitat, the sky, earth, water, and creatures of
Lake Travis near Austin, Texas. |
