Mathilde Le Coz: What are you working on at the moment?
Kaitlin Kraemer: My latest body of work has a new, refined energy, and a lot more depth – and I think that’s mostly due to being in my new studio space. After eight years in beautiful Nice, I felt it was time to say goodbye to the city hustle and bustle, and hello to countryside living. My husband and I bought an old olive farm in Grasse, and on the property, there is an outbuilding which I’ve transformed into my atelier.
Living and working in the city encouraged me to paint a little more frantically, with a more chaotic energy. But now, being surrounded by nature, and in a part of the world that boasts an incredibly rich history of artists, my style has visibly transformed. I’ve been painting fewer pieces, but on a much larger scale, and they’re very connected to the landscape. They still have an abstract quality to them, but they’re more about appreciating and honoring nature.
MLC: Looking at some of your new works, it seems like you are moving towards figuration. I know that you often do a lot of sketches from life, or from subjects in nature, and those sketches are very figurative too. I was just wondering whether you were thinking about slightly changing the direction of your work, or shifting your trajectory in some way?
KK: Sketching has become a bigger part of my practice; being able to walk out my front door and immediately be amongst the olive, cypress, and pine trees, has me drawing almost every single day. Changing my physical environment allowed me to slow down and think more about the process of my work. There’s even a strong figurative element creeping in, even though I’ve never seriously painted portraits. I feel like even the trees I’m painting have a human quality to them. Interestingly, the artworks that my husband and I have been collecting over the last year or two have been mostly portraits. There’s no surprise that the work we’ve been drawn to has inspired a shift in the direction of my paintings, too.
As an artist, it’s super important to both strengthen and evolve your craft. I think it’s common for creatives to get pigeonholed into painting in one particular style. You think, “People seem to resonate with this, or ‘this is selling well,’ or ‘this is receiving positive feedback, so I just need keep producing in the same way.’” But this can trap you into creating work mechanically and can remove a lot of the joy and spontaneity out of your practice. For me, when I feel comfortable with a medium or a style or subject, I try and change things up. Our move to the countryside has been a catalyst for just that: it’s given me the perfect reason to reassess my practice and rethink the direction I want it to take in.
Honestly, finally being in this beautiful forever home with this incredible, dedicated studio space, has massively helped to calm and settle my nervous system. I’m getting into this deeper layer of my practice that I couldn’t reach until this new chapter began. I spent so many years feeling lost, with art being the one constant thread. Painting has always given me a sense of home, a sense of self, when I felt I had very little else to keep me afloat. And I think that settling, that grounding, has started to show in my work. I feel like it seems a lot more cohesive. There’s still this excited kind of energy because of all the colors and brushstrokes I use, but it also feels a lot more grounded, refined and stable. There’s less tension. More certainty.
Additionally, my atelier is much bigger and brighter than anything I’ve worked in before and allowed my work to (literally) grow. I’m utilizing the full breadth of the space to paint as large as I can. Creating has become much more physical. I need a ladder to work on all these pieces now, and I’ve never painted on that scale before. So that’s been kind of nerve-racking, but also exciting, and very freeing.
MLC: How would you describe your working practice? How do you start a painting?
KK: Some subscribe to the notion that, to be a good artist, one must paint every single day. I’m not sure I really buy that. I think taking time to observe, to visit museums, and seek out other artists’ work at a galleries and art fairs, are all super important. Even seemingly non-art related activities have inspired paintings – like cooking and gardening, two of my favorite pastimes. I do try to maintain spending a couple of days a week in my studio, but that doesn’t mean that I’m always painting. Often, I’m researching, I’m writing in my journal, I’m reading, I’m listening to music, I’m playing the piano – an undercurrent of creativity is always there, whether a brush is in hand or not.
I try not to force myself into it. My practice is about allowing time for reflection, for moments where nothing seems to be happening, where you’re just sitting and thinking, drifting from thought to thought, soaking up the present – that’s when I get my best ideas. Sometimes, it’s when I’m writing that I get great ideas for paintings. I’ve journalled for the last twenty years, and I have this fantasy of one day to turn it into a book, but that’s super intimidating, because it’s so personal, and obviously very lengthy.
MLC: Do you work on different series at the same time?
KK: I always work on a minimum of two paintings at a time. Usually, it’s four or five. I find that if I focus all my energy on one, I get really frustrated with it quite quickly. I easily get obsessive, neurotic even, with details (a blessing and a curse). Working on multiple pieces at once also helps me keep the flow of the paintings moving, rather than getting hyper-fixated. While I do sketch and refer to my sketches when working, once I’ve drawn something, it’s sort of out of my brain and onto the paper. When I’m starting a new painting, I don’t ever sketch anything out on the canvas or copper. I just hastily go for it, based on the colors that I feel would work at the time.
I try to switch off my brain and paint as intuitively as possible, focusing on the movement of the brushstrokes and how the colors work together. It involves a lot of stepping away, observing, and trying not to rush it. That’s also why working on multiple pieces at a time helps, because you can approach each canvas with a certain energy or emotion, put down some brushstrokes, step back, look at it, and then turn to something else. It prevents you from overdoing a piece. And worst case, if I don’t like it or mess it up, I just paint over it and start again. That’s the beauty of it. My work, my rules.
MLC: In your past works, you integrated quite a lot of materials, such as flowers, gold leaf and copper. Why did you feel you needed to integrate them into your work?
KK: My husband and I briefly lived outside Florence a few years ago, also in the countryside, and it was very calming. That experience inspired me to really start mixing materials: copper with the oil paint, acrylic with origami paper, and even wildflowers that I found amongst the olive trees. It was almost childlike, the way I approached my work during that time, in the sense that it was carefree and playful. I created just for the joy of making – I wasn’t thinking about producing or selling.
As for the need for the integration? We’re all acutely aware that this is a very pivotal and worrying time, when it comes to the environment. The natural world is both crying out for help, and fighting back, in extreme ways. The majority of people are hyper aware of climate change and these extremes that we’re experiencing. I think that’s probably also part of the reason why I’m gravitating more towards abstracted and figurative landscapes. Nature feels fractured, because of what we as human beings have done (or, not done), and there’s an intersection there that I want to explore further in my work.
MLC: What are your main sources of inspiration? Are there any artists you particularly enjoy looking at and often return to whenever you’re looking for inspiration?
KK: I absolutely love Cecily Brown. I find her work so alive, so inspiring. I went to see Picture Making at The Serpentine, and I love how in her exhibit statement, she admits that she doesn’t necessarily have a message to get across with her art. That she paints for the sake of painting – her pieces ask questions, and search for answers. I felt that explanation was just beautifully put. And I love the way she incorporates animals and elements of nature into her work as well. So, yeah, Cecily has probably been one major artist I’ve become obsessed with. As well as Rita Ackermann, her brushwork is so energizing. Obviously, Jenny Saville is just incredible, her figurative work never ceases to amaze. Then there’s Michaela Yearwood-Dan, and Lucy Bull, and newcomers Lola Strongbrett, Laura Foote, Vanessa Raw … so much powerful feminine energy in the art market now, at last!
And of course I’m forever inspired by all the 9th street women, the Abstract Expressionists from the ’40s and ’50s in NYC, like Helen Frankenthaler, Joan Mitchell, Elaine de Koonig, Grace Hartigan, Lee Krasner. They were the artists I studied ten years ago when I moved from doing more impressionistic landscapes towards abstract work, and they have always been my greatest source of inspiration: the gestures, the colors, the movement... they’re just buzzing, you know? These women opened my mind to abstraction. There’s something powerful about the fact that these gifted painters, who weren’t really recognized at the time, just followed their instincts and pursued their passion. Now their work has finally achieved the recognition it deserves, at long last. It’s empowering, and it’s about time.
MLC: What triggered that change ten years ago? You said you moved from something more impressionistic or figurative towards something more personal and abstract?
KK: Well, I was going through a bit of a difficult time, a period of intense transition. I realized I wasn’t happy in my (first) marriage and made the decision to get a divorce. I wanted to do something that was just for me, because I felt that, for so long, I had been doing everything for other people. And I’d just had enough of it. I was like, I just want to do something for myself, damnit. So, yeah, I quit my steady job, left my partner, moved back home to Boston and back in with my parents, and went to grad school at the School of the Museum of Fine Arts at Tufts University.
I was like, I just want to be selfish for a year and really think about what makes me happy. What do I want to do? How do I find myself again? Because I felt incredibly numb and lost.
I remember I started out there just painting my usual impressionistic landscapes. And then midway through the school year, I had this board review. Of all the works I presented—there were about thirty paintings—I had one that was slightly abstract (that I didn’t particularly like). And both of my professors said, “This is the best piece, for sure. You need to go in this direction. This is YOU.” And I was like, “This is crap! I don’t know what this is, I have no idea what I’m doing!” And their reply, while it felt harsh to me at the time, was spot on: “You’ve got to get out of your comfort zone. You’re here to learn, to change and to grow. Leave everything else behind and pursue this.”
And literally, I... it’s kind of embarrassing to admit, but I didn’t know anything about abstract art or abstract expressionism. I’d never even heard of these female painters before. Fortunately, my mentor really took me under her wing and introduced me to all these women, what they painted, why they painted. And I think especially at that time, feeling on my own and having blown up my relationship and my life – being introduced to all these badass women who were phenomenal, talented painters and creating works I’d never even dreamed of doing, really pushed me in this whole new direction.
It was a very empowering, breakthrough moment for me. It represents inner strength; a rebirth, if you will – and having the courage to go off and do your own thing, even when it’s hard, even if few seem to understand. It was about the journey, and the destination. Colorful, messy, and perfectly imperfect.
