“But how could you live and have no story to tell?” ― Fyodor Dostoyevsky, White Nights

Deep, intense, and powerful, Kathryn Jacobi’s artwork has the same melancholic, somber depths, colors, tones, and moods of Dostoyevsky’s novels. They cut like a knife into your heart, and they allow it to bleed, touched by the truth and the beauty of what your eyes have witnessed in Kathryn’s powerful imagery. In a classic, sometimes surrealist, manner, she captures, portrays, dissects, and examines the human psyche in depth. In her work, nothing is accidental. Every detail, every impression, and every stroke is masterfully calculated and masterfully executed. There are not too many artists who are in such complete control while creating their art. Her pieces are truly museum pieces that happen to be shown in galleries. They expand into many years and many different phases of her life. Jacobi’s work consists of different series, such as presentational paintings, imagined paintings, drawings, etchings, digital works, installations, and waxing editions. In that, she is absolutely a very prolific artist .

In her scratchboard drawings in this exhibition, you see groups of lines at play. You see them move and twist, step into and away from each other, just as if in a dance. You see them gather together and then scatter. The lines become a whisper, then they turn into a scream, and at last, just like they are obeying the high notes of a symphony, they come together before they disappear into the darkness of their scratchboard background. To me, the lines in these drawings suggest something, such as brain wave lengths vibrating, emerging completely from once subconscious mind. Maybe if we knew the code to all the lines in Kathryn’s drawings, then we could  know the language to read into the story of the artist’s life. After all, we all have many stories to tell. Just like Dostoyevsky said in his book, White Nights, “But how could you live and have no story to tell?”

– Mahvash Mossaed

KATHRYN JACOBI: organic fractiles

“I saw a friend’s first drawings on scratchboard. I was immediately intrigued. Drawing with an etching needle or special sharp, spade-shaped nib to scratch white lines through a prepared ink surface over a clay ground, I found a medium that was highly satisfying. It gave me the advantage of a full range of tonality between dark and light values, while still using a tool that felt comfortable and totally natural.

In these drawings, I can move the tool over the surface just a small distance, with the movement of my hand anchored in one place by my wrist. I move the stylus in short, parallel lines, which usually forms a curved plane. At the end of each series of strokes, I move my hand and continue, building up the volumes and directions slowly, deliberately, and yet without a preconceived plan of how the drawing will emerge. I find this practice exciting in its abstraction, whereas my other modalities of work are almost always figurative and determined. These abstractions have a definite pattern of emergence. The forms are almost always organic, and mimic the process of creating fractals on a computer. Each form becomes a variable that is added to and developed to become part of a much more complex whole.”

Kathryn Jacobi is a classically trained contemporary realist painter, printmaker, and photographer who has been exhibiting in galleries and museums throughout the United States, Canada, and Europe.

Kathryn was born in Manhattan, New York. She attended UCLA, UC Berkeley, and California State University Northridge, where she received her BA and her MA. Kathryn presently lives in Santa Monica and has a studio in Los Angeles.

Exhibition Details

 See the online exhibition at Demossa Gallery
July 21 – October 20, 2013

For inquiries regarding the artist and his work, such as pricing and availability, please send an email to art@demossagallery.com.

Tags: Art, Art Reviews, Artists, Demossa Gallery, Etchings, Exhibition, Kathryn Jacobi, Paintings, Scratchboard

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