Kat Wheatley

The great Italian film-maker Michelangelo Antonioni used to say ⁽¹⁾​ he didn't write films but painted them “as one paints a picture”⁽²⁾.​ Moving between cinematic imagery framing the mise-en-scène, into the materiality of paint, my paintings depict intimate settings.

The power of cinematic imagery and the way that the gaze is constructed, enables the viewer to identify with a protagonist and step into a scene. These are all things I draw upon to make my painting still spaces where a scene / story can unfold.

As a starting point I use film stills, then experiment with collapsing and reconstructing them with the intention of finding ways to enhance emotive qualities. Silhouette and reduction of the image opens up a space for imagined potential.

Selecting cinema moments where the protagonist finds themselves in private and intimate scenes, I narrow in on spaces of contemplation and introspection, revealing the very human experience of solitude.

^{1) Alisa Lebow, ‘The Cinema of Me: The Self and Subjectivity in First Person Documentary’, ​Columbia University Press​, 2012.
2) Jackson Arn,​'6 Cinematographers Who Took Cues from Famous Painters, from Caravaggio to Hopper', Artsy, 2​018.}