I am the place in which something has occurred. Claude Levi Strauss
I make paintings and drawings that seek to show how our feelings, emotions and thoughts reveal themselves through our bodies. I paint odd figures: exaggerated limbs reaching out to partners, miscounted fingers and extra hands touching, desperately grasping, holding phantom figures close, even as they ward them off.
My work is by turns comic, tragic and erotic.
I liken my painting and drawing to the comedy of trying to hold all inside…the too full closet with the warning: “Whatever you do…Don’t open it!” And then, the inevitable tumble of embarrassing moments, the sexual desire requited and not, garbage piling up forgotten to be thrown away. I paint what we try to hold back: shame, anger, love, desire, resentment. I paint the failure of our intended restraint.
I work with oil paint, charcoal, paint thinner, rags, palette knives, pastels, erasers. I work intuitively, trusting impulses. Ready to erase or wipe away marks. The paintings and drawings show the “mistakes” as more than a vestige of process, they are an integral part of inspiration. There is a parallel that exists between the canvas and our bodies, the marks with our emotions and feelings. These so-called mistakes are active choices. They contribute to the picture I am making. They show a path, its history, that make the painting whole…like us.
Karin Campbell is an artist living and working in Brooklyn. She has exhibited at PS1 MoMA, the Whitney Museum of American Art, and the Queens Museum.
