Wednesday, March 1, 2017

Local Art Seen: Rooted Expression -- Elizabeth Kuth at the DAI

Duluth Art Institute
Morrison Gallery
February 16 -- April 9, 2017







From the Artist Statement
This body of work emerged during a fourteen year period of studio work "aimed at developing a language expressing Feeling with Significant Form. These paintings are a portrait on my life experience of love and loss, birth and death. Within my Abstract Expressionist style you are called to look and feel in the forms a depth of meaning in your own life experience."



A little further on Kuth describes her move to the country as a way of life inspired by reflection and her personal search for meaning. Her mornings began with a ritual of spontaneous drawing, tapping into the heart of her humanness.  


Her work has been evolving, tied in part to her environment and driven by the deeper questions that make up our eternal quest: Who Am I? and What Am I Saying? Influences include her German heritage, Carl Jung, experiences of loss, ancestry and an ocean of memories. 

"My focus grew," she writes, "as my ability to simplify form and shape meaning in the Abstract Formal Elements. The simplifying of space tied to the nature of my living space connected me with the word primitivism. Dubuffet and Miro were influential along with children art. They had an effect on my looser approach to painting, how I would scumble the paint and build it with transparent layers, leaving edges that created line and movement, rough-simplified forms associated with modernism."

What's interesting in the work is how it comes from such deep personal spaces within the artist, yet speaks in universal forms capable of connecting with us all.  


The energy here is something akin to a portrait of her personal life, shared with the hope that others will be touched and even feel connected to it. 

She notes that we live in a period of history where more than ever we need to stay in touch with our Selves and our humanity. Kuth's body of work is the fruit of one person's search. 

Be sure to make time to see this exhibit. Go! For best results I would encourage a slow engagement. 

EdNote: Apologies for any distortion of colors in these reproductions. 

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