Much of my work is a hybrid of media and genres, teetering back and forth between being very process-orientated and concept-driven, and alternating between personal and universal imagery as the reference.  I work in a variety of media that includes painting, installation, collage and works on paper to illustrate my interest in the relationship between artifice, escapism, transience and permanence in our culture.  The landscape, natural disasters, make-shift structures and piles of discarded objects frequently turn up in my work as visual references to the fragility and exhilaration of life. 

 

The title Ex-Voto references the historic votive paintings created as a devotional object to give thanks for protection after surviving a catastrophic incident.  I have long-admired these paintings for their sincerity and immediacy, and for their use of both beautiful and terrifying imagery.

- Kate Stewart