Katherine Surridge

Through the act of painting and video making I am interested in working with ideas of place, boundaries, movement, transformation and story. I use symbols and structures that combine figurative and architectural forms with nature. 

At the first stage of a painting I draw iconic shapes that establish a visual foundation and structure. When the layers of oil paint build and marks are added the shapes transform and a story develops i.e. a house becomes a gravestone, a fence turns into a grid, gate, cage or carpet, abstract shapes become figures.  The changes made to my original drawn structure parallel my thoughts on what this development will be about.  But my main concern at this stage of the painting is the process itself. As the marks lead the way a level of trust occurs and the elements expand to reveal my concerns with home, family, community, relationships, loss, death and entrapment. This is where the personal becomes the universal.   

Katherine Surridge