I grew up in and around the suburbs of Boston, Massachusetts.  I studied art and many other wonderful, miscellaneous things at Wellesley College and received an MFA from the School of the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston.  Since moving to Southwest Montana in 2011, I’ve found inspiration for my work in the history, flora and fauna of the American West.

Art-making is the way that I process and respond to the world around me so that I don’t implode or explode or fall into the void. The conceptual underpinning of my work is the sheer, impossibly wonderful existence of life on earth, my wonder at it, the interconnectedness of it all, and what it feels like to participate in all of its simultaneous ugliness, beauty, despair, joy, darkness and light.  

My work combines scratchboard drawing with acrylic painting.  The scratchboard portions of my work are made on white clay panels that I coat with black ink.  Using tattoo needles and an x-acto blade, I carve layers of tiny lines into the ink to reveal the white clay underneath.  It’s an incredibly engaging process and its subtractive nature makes it feel almost like an excavation.  My technique with acrylic is almost like a mirror version, the inverse, of my scratchboard process.  I build my painted forms slowly, using dozens of layers of thin acrylic paint and very small brushes.  I’m interested in the conversation between these media, the subtractive and additive processes, and what they can say together that they cannot say on their own.

www.kaetlynable.com

When did your interest in art begin vs. when you began thinking of it as a career/life choice?

I’ve loved making things with my hands for as long as I can remember. Throughout my childhood, “artist” was the one constant on my otherwise ever-changing list of things I wanted to be when I grew up. But as actual adulthood loomed closer, I didn’t have a clear idea about what kind of career path I wanted to follow. I chose to go to a liberal arts college with a good art department so that I could keep exploring lots of subjects and see how things unfolded. But I was only a few weeks into my first college level drawing course when I became obsessed! My school was an all-women’s college, and our studio art department was this incredibly nurturing little community. We were digging down into the nitty-gritty principles of form and composition, thinking deeply about mark-making and process in ways that just blew my mind. It felt like the whole world was opening up before my eyes. That’s when I knew that this was the path I wanted to follow for the rest of my life.

What draws you to your particular subject matter?

I make black and white portrait drawings of animals interlaced with colorful little worlds of painted flora, birds and insects.

I love observing, learning, and wondering about wildlife, from our big rocky mountain fauna to the tiniest little garden spider. I’m especially interested in the similarities and connections between human beings and wild animals. What does it feel like to be a bighorn sheep, a chipmunk, a bumblebee? I like imagining.

My most visceral love is for flowers. Spending time looking at them closely floods me with feelings of peace and wonder. Their symbolism is central to my world view that life is beautiful largely because it is so fleeting. Conceptually I am also interested in the garden as a bridge between the human world and the natural world.

What interest of yours (outside of art) ends up influencing your practice the most?

Spending time outside has the biggest influence on my work. I like to wander around my neighborhood watching birds and rabbits, crouching down to look in people’s gardens. And I love hiking around in the mountains. I enjoy going really slowly, stopping all the time to examine things closely.

What is one piece of advice you wish you could give your younger self?

This is a really tough question! I’ve certainly made a lot of mistakes and done my fair share of flailing around. But in retrospect, all those bumps in the road feel like essential parts of the journey.

Furthermore, my younger self was NOT prone to listening to advice if it contradicted something that I’d already decided I was going to do. For example, I had just been accepted into an MFA program, when one of my college professors told me that I wasn’t ready and shouldn’t go. But I went anyway, and she turned out to be right. I felt like a lost soul in that program and thought I’d made a terrible mistake. But all these years later I’m so glad that I white knuckled my way through it. So many important creative seeds were planted there, and it gave me a really thick skin about my art! So, I wouldn’t dare to change anything. Maybe that’s the wisdom I would impart to my younger self--just a little reassuring balm to ease my anxieties through the difficult times. I might say, “The path won’t be linear. It will be longer and more winding than you are imagining. But you’ll always find ways to keep plugging away, and the speed bumps and potholes will ultimately teach you the most important stuff.”

What would you say is your biggest goal for this year?

My intention for this year is to really focus on the workflow within my creative practice. I’m excited to dive deep down into my ideas, and let my energy guide me where it wants to go. In the past a lot of my energy was focused on making sure that I could make enough income, month to month, to keep my business going. And that focus would bleed into my creative practice. I would semi-consciously start thinking about what I imagined collectors wanted to buy, and repress the work that I had a deep desire to create. When I do that, my work really suffers and I end up feeling frustrated a lot of the time. I spent last year creating better systems to streamline my business and make it easier and more fun to run. This was life-changing! It’s given me a lot more bandwidth and clarity so that I am able to better insulate my creative practice from external pressures. Every morning, when I enter the studio, I sit quietly for a few minutes until I feel a little tug pulling me toward a particular piece-in-progress or new idea. My big goal is to follow that tug every day of 2023.