KATERI EWING
Extraordinary in the Ordinary
The elegantly simple artwork of Kateri Ewing is grounded in finding beauty in the ordinary things she observes in her daily life. Her art, which is mainly smaller scale works done in either watercolors, graphite or charcoal, show us the many forms of life that surround her home in western New York, like birds, butterflies, dragonflies and botanicals. But not the types of plants you’d typically see, she says. Instead, Ewing will paint a leaf on the ground that captivated her in some way, a pine cone that caught her attention or a bushel of weeds in her yard.
“I paint what I love, and I paint what I love that day. I’m not the kind of artist that will do a themed show, but this time, it seemed like my body of work was made up of ordinary things—weeds, tiny songbirds, molds that were cracked,” says Ewing. Her upcoming show at Meibohm Fine Arts in East Aurora, New York, is called Visual Poems – In Praise of the Ordinary. She adds, “For me, [art is about] stopping and taking a very close look at something in the world around you. By trying to
document it on paper, I’m learning to love it even more. And I believe when we love things, we take care of them.”
Ewing uses handmade paper in a variety of textures and tones, as well as handmade watercolors that come from crushed minerals, gemstones, clay, rock and other organic material. “Watercolor moves. It’s magical to watch, and there’s an element of chance. There’s an energy there that I enjoy painting and creating with,” she says. “For me, it’s the most expressive medium with the way the colors mix and mingle, and it also allows me to be very precise. I can use a watercolor brush exactly as I use a pencil, so I have the best of both worlds.”
Bird Psalm I and Bird Psalm II, each depicting a single bird reminiscent of juncos, were painted with watercolors from crushed gemstones and crystals like sapphire, malachite and shungite. These aren’t literal depictions of birds she’s observed, but rather, birds that she knows in her mind, born out of a poem she wrote several years back.
For the paintings in her Hana and Ikebana series, Ewing says she drew her inspiration from a love of East Asian arts and Japanese aesthetics, as well as simple Asian brush art. Wild Flowers II are weeds, like dandelions and clovers, from her garden, something she considers beautiful and not a nuisance.
One of her favorite pieces is Moon in Taurus, a charcoal landscape with a luminous moon peeking over the horizon line. “Charcoal is a very soft and sculptable medium,” she says, explaining that the piece was completed by building up layers of hatch marks, contrasted by an absence of the material to create a white, vivid moon.
On top of her work as an artist, Ewing teaches intuitive painting that helps individuals develop an artistic practice in their lives, not for the purpose of creating fine art but to help people create something they find beautiful—something that enriches the soul.
Visual Poems will be on view from September 27 to October 26.