Attend to Beauty
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ARTISTS STATEMENTS - !
KAREN CHAUSSABEL
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Gentle Strength is part of Exploring!, a series where I followed a thread of inspiration through different media. I explored form and feeling by printing, painting, stitching on papers of various kinds, with encaustic, ink, fibers. It is a body of work that represents my delight in exploring, tool in hand, heart open.!
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The title for this piece, Gentle Strength comes from the material itself. They are words found on the pages from my college thesaurus which I hand-stitched to watercolor paper.!
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The initial inspiration is my encounter with a majestic specimen of agave americana (century plant, maguey in Spanish). It stood in the midst of the ruins of Ex-convento San Francisco, now Museo Rafael Coronel, in Zacatecas, Zac. Mexico.!
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It was large, full of life. I was struck by its presence, its vitality. This plant embodied strength, resilience, rebirth, and that spoke to me, deeply. It still does. !
Gentle Strength! Paper, thread! 11.25 x 11 inches! $650
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Wild Blue Yonder is an encaustic monotype where the fluid quality of encaustic is fully revealed. The experience of loosely brushing encaustic paint onto a hot plate, placing a piece of paper on it, is a dynamic one. Encaustic spreads on the paper, colors meld, blend, shapes are created. When I lift the paper up, an image is revealed. I love that. I can choose to continue, add different marks or let it be. It allows me to be in the moment and create in the moment. Where encaustic flows, I follow.
! Wild Blue Yonder! Paper, encaustic! 5.5 x 4. inches! $260!
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Wild Blue Yonder is part of a series, Into the Horizon, where encaustic and the monotype process contribute to the feeling of exploration, of stepping a little further into those horizons as expansive bodies of water and land emerge. Contact: kchaussabel@gmail.com! karenchaussabel.com! FB: Cradledhearts Artists Statements - June 1, 2015