Chatham Kemp

Artist Statement

My paintings celebrate my love of making discoveries with the expressive power of color and the physical process of layering paint on canvas. Each work walks a line between representation and abstraction. Certainly, they suggest natural forms such as plants, trees and flowers, not to mention weather patterns and other natural world references. Yet, first, they are also concrete forms where I attempt to organize and harness the energies of color, shape, light, marks and patterns.
 
Fundamental to my paintings is the south Mississippi landscape that I call home. Here there is no long view of the natural world. Instead, one is perpetually staggered by the bright sun and sky and the intense, highly charged colors of trees and flowers always so close at hand, blanketed by humidity. It is my hope that the paintings are like a long walk in this environment where one is, at times, overwhelmed by the sensations of light and color, but it is the overall impact of the experience that one remembers.
 
What interests me in painting is composing an entire world made of fragments – a patch of light here, the suggestion of a color or a shape there –that flow together in a way that is not always logical, temporally or spatially. I feel, as human beings, we have an amazing ability to revise, compress and fuse together elements that constitute the memory of our experiences. The tension of making these revisions and fusions happen on a canvas, whether it is through juxtaposing one color with another or suggesting forms that seem to jump from one moment in time to another, is, what I believe, gives my paintings their bite.  Our world is increasingly fraught with instability while maintaining its beauty in spite of this. I hope my work conveys resilience despite not knowing exactly where our journey may be going.