BIO
Kathleen Buchanan is a printmaker and painter living and working on the coast of Maine. She received her BS in Biology from Tufts University and her MS in Wildlife Biology from the University of Alaska Fairbanks. Following graduate school, Buchanan completed a year-long independent study in printmaking at Heartwood College of Art in Kennebunk, ME.
She is represented by galleries throughout northern New England, and has exhibited her work at the Center for Maine Contemporary Art (Rockland, ME) and the Center for Contemporary Printmaking (Norwalk, CT). Her work has been featured in Maine Home and Design, Maine the Way, Yankee Magazine, and collagraph printmaking textbooks. She regularly teaches printmaking workshops throughout Maine.
Buchanan is a resident fellow at the Ballinglen Art Foundation (Co. Mayo, Ireland), and the recipient of an Amity Art Foundation travel grant to complete work on Great Blasket Island (Co. Kerry, Ireland). Her work is in the public collections of the Boston Atheneum, the Wendell Gilley Museum, and the Ballinglen Museum of Contemporary Art, and has been exhibited in the Art in Embassies program through the US Department of State.
ARTIST STATEMENT
Printmaking and painting are the tools I use to explore my connection to the world around me. I create images that evoke a strong sense of place, memory, and connection to the landscape and its inhabitants. Living on the coast of Maine gives me access to a dynamic landscape that shifts endlessly through tides, storm cycles, and seasons. My work often explores places of transition: ocean meeting spruce-lined granite shores, or farmland giving way to undeveloped forest. I am endlessly fascinated by the wildlife I encounter both on the water and in the forest, as well as the beauty of the agricultural landscape that surrounds our home in midcoast Maine.
When printmaking, I work almost exclusively in the collagraph medium. My collagraph printing plates are simple collages made from cut watercolor paper glued onto MDF board, and coated with acrylic mediums to create surface texture and seal the plates. They are then inked with an oil-based etching ink and run through a press to transfer the ink onto paper. Typically, I create a single plate for each color, building the printed image one color at a time with each pass through the press. The resulting prints have a simplicity of form and depth of texture that echo the natural environments that I love to depict.
My painting practice evolved directly out of my experience with collagraph plate building- having worked with acrylic mediums for years, it was a natural transition to begin exploring acrylic painting. I paint both on birch panels and gessoed hot-press watercolor paper, building up heavier initial layers of paint and finishing with glazing layers. I appreciate the direct mark making and immediate nature of the medium, so different from the process of building printing plates to create an image.
I am inspired by the beauty of this corner of the world where I live. My goal is to create images to connect people to the natural world and to remind the viewer that we exist within community. In our contemporary culture, we are easily separated from the rhythms and resources that nurture us. It is my hope that my work will help to ground the viewer in their sense of place and belonging.