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Self-portrait 1997
Kathryn Gabinet-Kroo began her career as an artist studying life drawing and black and white photography at the Boston Museum School. A painter for over thirty years and a former instructor at the now-defunct Saidye Bronfman School of Fine Arts, the artist has had her studio in the same neighbourhood as this St. Henri gallery since 1989.
When she moved to Montreal in 1977, Gabinet-Kroo found herself without a darkroom, so she began experimenting with watercolours and later with oils. The world of colour opened itself up to this self-taught painter who quickly developed a technique that suited her highly realistic still-lifes.
After a decade of showing these works in solo and group shows, Gabinet-Kroo turned her observant eye to those around her, devoting the next six years almost exclusively to painting large-scale portraits of her friends, many of them dancers and artists. Her passion for black and white resurfaced in these essentially monochromatic watercolours: warm and cold blacks and subtle tones of brown and grey are highlighted by well-placed touches of colour.
Kathryn Gabinet-Kroo experiences her natural surroundings in a very special way, so after completing a collection of over fifty portraits, the artist took another turn, beginning two series in oil, one of flowers and landscapes and the other of water scenes. With an observant eye, she stops and studies what to other people is simply visual information to be quickly processed and then forgotten in their urgency to get somewhere else. The theme that remains constant throughout her work is the repetition of motifs originating in nature: the rippled reflections in water, waves breaking on the shore, light and dark masses of leaves, and the intricate patterning of flower petals.
Continuing in the tradition of J.M.W. Turner and Claude Monet, Kathryn Gabinet-Kroo paints watery places that are in constant flux even at their stillest moments. In her paintings, water alters the appearance of a pond's aquatic life, changing the shapes of the fish and lilies that live at and below the calm surface.
Once again Gabinet-Kroo had to develop techniques to satisfy her personal imagery. While some of her works incorporate the use of gouache and pastel, most of the images are created using the classical technique of layering a series of oil glazes over an oil underpainting to produce the glowing colours of her painted surfaces. "Colour, shape, and pattern are foremost," says the artist, "They clamour to be translated into a language spoken in paint on paper, panel or canvas." This body of work represents the artist's ongoing quest to create portraits of her subjects that are faithful to her vision of the world around her.
When she moved to Montreal in 1977, Gabinet-Kroo found herself without a darkroom, so she began experimenting with watercolours and later with oils. The world of colour opened itself up to this self-taught painter who quickly developed a technique that suited her highly realistic still-lifes.
After a decade of showing these works in solo and group shows, Gabinet-Kroo turned her observant eye to those around her, devoting the next six years almost exclusively to painting large-scale portraits of her friends, many of them dancers and artists. Her passion for black and white resurfaced in these essentially monochromatic watercolours: warm and cold blacks and subtle tones of brown and grey are highlighted by well-placed touches of colour.
Kathryn Gabinet-Kroo experiences her natural surroundings in a very special way, so after completing a collection of over fifty portraits, the artist took another turn, beginning two series in oil, one of flowers and landscapes and the other of water scenes. With an observant eye, she stops and studies what to other people is simply visual information to be quickly processed and then forgotten in their urgency to get somewhere else. The theme that remains constant throughout her work is the repetition of motifs originating in nature: the rippled reflections in water, waves breaking on the shore, light and dark masses of leaves, and the intricate patterning of flower petals.
Continuing in the tradition of J.M.W. Turner and Claude Monet, Kathryn Gabinet-Kroo paints watery places that are in constant flux even at their stillest moments. In her paintings, water alters the appearance of a pond's aquatic life, changing the shapes of the fish and lilies that live at and below the calm surface.
Once again Gabinet-Kroo had to develop techniques to satisfy her personal imagery. While some of her works incorporate the use of gouache and pastel, most of the images are created using the classical technique of layering a series of oil glazes over an oil underpainting to produce the glowing colours of her painted surfaces. "Colour, shape, and pattern are foremost," says the artist, "They clamour to be translated into a language spoken in paint on paper, panel or canvas." This body of work represents the artist's ongoing quest to create portraits of her subjects that are faithful to her vision of the world around her.
