CATHRINE EDLINGER-KUNZE
Dream Path
When asked about the nature of her work and where it is leading her, New Mexico painter Cathrine EdlingerKunze had a refreshingly honest answer: “I have no solution.”
“That’s not what painting is for me,” she adds. “Answers will not always be there. I’m seeking them out with these trials, and sometimes I succeed at getting closer, and sometimes I don’t, but looking is the reason I’m here. I want to search for the truth with each new painting.”
Edlinger-Kunze will be showing her new work October 24 to November 7 at Paul Scott Gallery in Scottsdale, Arizona. Her latest pieces are experimentations with color and form. She begins with a layer of acrylic that goes on without any planning or forethought. She simply lets her emotion guide the brush into waves of soft color and gentle forms. During this early process she may find something, a pinpoint of paint or a shape that emerges from the canvas, and from that point she will build her image— maybe fingers, an eye or a mouth. Once the foundation is on and the purpose of the painting begins to shine through, she switches to oils to begin to flesh out the idea. This hybrid of acrylic and oil is certainly not new in the art world, but Edlinger-Kunze is using it in remarkable ways that allows her to “let go” of herself as she works.
“I call it my ‘Dream Path,’” says the
painter, who was born in Germany, but is now an American citizen living in Albuquerque. “Right now my Dream Path is continuing something that I established in my last show, this idea of home. That one was more about where I live now, but for this show I want to go back to my roots in Europe, specifically in Germany. These are dreams I’m living, because I’m always longing for fantasy without consequences. I’m making up stories as I go.”
Works include Place Pigalle, with its twin female figures who emerge from the paint amid washes of blue, pink and orange; One-Two-Three, this one showing a trio of figures cavorting in the abstracted forms of the acrylic background; and Sophie’s World, which is based on Jostein Gaarder’s book of the same name, which involves a girl who seeks out a philosopher so she can ask questions related to her existence.
“One of the big questions in the book is what is real, or maybe what is shadow. It’s an amazing book and never lets me go,” she says. “It’s an attempt to find a solution. But solutions don’t always interest me.”