This site is preserved as in memory of Kate Friedman (1955-2012) by her family with love always.

My work seeks a common language: of nature and technology, the rational and the intuitive, order and complexity, the mark of the hand and the mark of the machine. 

Original paintings and photographs provide the history and material for my current work. I scan, photograph and manipulate my images digitally, then print these altered forms on large sheets of frosted mylar. Mining my own work, I paint, draw, collage, edit, reassemble on the print, in both meditative and analytic exploration, responding to multiple layers of underlying information. The industrial colors of the digital screen and the street co-exist in dialogue with the colors of sky, water and land. Sometimes it is difficult to tell which parts of the works are made by hand and which are printed by the machine — raising issues of self-appropriation and the mechanical reproduction of my original work.

Variations of scale and fractalization occur in recursive patterns, referencing visible structures in nature, microscopic, or macroscopic views. This work may also suggest complex network visualization in topography and computing—though the data may be overwhelming, and the results inconclusive. 

Older work

The two-part series, Dark Matter/Gray Matter, consists of mixed-media paintings on canvas, and drawings on mylar laserprints derived from the paintings. In the paintings,
I explore the physical nature of the universe and shape the material environment through dynamic forces of gravity, flow, shear and turbulence. I work on the wall and the floor of my studio, bending, folding and tipping the canvas, pouring, brushing and pooling. Natural materials are suspended in gloss or matte mediums, drying in various states of reflectivity and transparency. My objective is to create a disorienting space where the viewer may simultaneously experience immense or microscopic views—terrestrial, cosmic or elemental landscapes of chaos, creation, destruction, evolution and possibility.

For the drawings, I map the paintings with digital tools and output the manipulated
images on mylar, at the full original size of the paintings. In a meditative exploration of the transformed image, I draw with ink, graphite, pastel and prismacolor on the front and back of the translucent mylar. The drawings become diagrams of the complex physical network of the paintings—unlike, yet intimately bound to them.

In the Bright Matter series, I use recycled industrial materials as the substrate for paintings and drawings. Traces of prior information are revealed in the patterns of printer’s ink, marking the passage of time and the industrial rhythms of production. I adapt, overpaint, piece together, and draw in a dialogue between the mark of the machine and that of my hand. The communicative intent of the original printing is dissolved—the new work exists as an altered witness.

In Stones and Front Matter, I explore the urban environment. The work addresses the random beauty of the sidewalk, architecture, found objects and building materials. I mix dirt and snow from the street into the paint to capture the raw materials of nature.

Night Sky includes paintings and drawings which examine the geometry and physics of the universe. As a human part of that system, the arc of my arm and the height and composition of my body are part of that interconnected mass and energy. The work expresses the wonder and terror of an ambiguous space, and can be read as macro or micro views of an infinite landscape.