In her painting, Spirits of the House,Kat Kinnick surrounds herself with elements of her life from the Northern New Mexico landscape, to the folk art she grew up with and the Navajo rugs she helps restore at a studio in Albuquerque, following in the footsteps of her parents. And then, there are the animals, from an inscrutable cat to a symbolic black wolf that came to her in a dream.
Kat Kinnick in her studio. Photo by Brandon Soder.
As a multidisciplinary artist, Kinnick brings animals into all her work—in cobalt blue on her ceramic dinnerware, in full color as in her gouache, Omen – A Cuckoo Flew, and fanciful studies like A Friend, drawn with marker.
In her work she explores the relationships among things rather than their separateness. She says, “I’ve always been a fan of dualities and complements: loss and love, cute and fierce, harmony and dissonance. As an artist, it’s my world— I can create whatever and whoever I want, the energies and personalities, and the stories I long for.”
Spirits of the House, gouache on paper, 45½ x 30³/5 in.
Her recent paintings will be shown in the exhibition Kat Kinnick: A Benevolent Force at Hecho a Mano in Santa Fe, New Mexico, May 3 through June 3.
The gallery notes, “Kinnick’s aesthetic and narrative starting point for the show was Hayao Miyazaki’s 1997 film Princess Mononoke.In the film, the harmony that humans, animals and gods have enjoyed is disintegrating. Kinnick recalls an image from the movie that shows Princess Mononoke riding on a huge, fierce wolf, wearing a ‘sharp, determined look of feminine rage.’”
Omen – A Cuckoo Flew, gouache on paper, 15½ x 11¾ in.
At the Albuquerque rug shop, she revels in conversations with her two female coworkers, often delving into the divine energy of the feminine. She comments on feminine rage that is “the strength that stands before harm and injustice and says ‘No more:’ No more poor decision making, no more destructive, catastrophic, trauma inflicting, warmongering, violating actions.”
A Friend, marker, 5 x 7 in.
She also comments on the feminine roles of caretaker, protector and nurturer. She often refers to other female creators such as Robin Wall Kimmerer, the Potawatomi botanist and author, who wrote, “From the very beginning of the world, the other species were a lifeboat for the people. Now, we must be theirs.” —
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