Kathryn Dolby
Kathryn Dolby is an emerging visual artist residing in the Northern Rivers, NSW. Dolby’s paintings reflect an intent and expressive curiosity about the quiet and seemingly insignificant in-between moments of everyday life. Through an intuitive exploration of colour and reductive forms, her current investigations delve into the emotional and physical landscapes that are deeply immersed in her transition into and through motherhood. In 2014 she completed her Bachelor of Visual Arts at Southern Cross University in Lismore and was awarded the Lismore Regional Gallery Graduate Award. As a result of this Kathryn had her first solo exhibition in the Lismore Regional Gallery in 2015. During her time at university she was awarded the Camera House Visual Arts Scholarship and the Kaske award for printmaking.
“My studio-based practice is centred on an intuitive exploration of the materiality of paint, with an interest in conveying an emotive resonance with place. Through reclaimed visual information collected from my surroundings such as colour, shapes within the home and studio or suggestions of landscape from the backyard; I reduce form and layer paint in order to then find a quiet and contemplative sense of the in-between. This ambiguous middle ground is where I playfully explore the blur between abstraction and figuration, between movement and stillness, between order and chaos. Some of my latest works also trace a personal shift in perspectives after becoming a mother; the trees are highlighted and slightly personified to mirror a mother’s gaze, presenting a humanized view of the landscape.
When painting in my home studio I think about moving through the landscape and how fleeting the experience is. With thinned down paint I chase my memories of it, the colours, shapes and light that shift with the weather. I’m also interested in how our view shifts with changes in circumstance. With the recent weather events of bushfires, floods and current pandemic, the landscape may be experienced more through a car window, a screen, or a curtain in the bathroom. I’ve employed the ‘curtain’ as a device to obscure the landscape and blur the space between inside and outside”.
