Women United ART PRIZE 2023
Photography & Printmaking Category
finalist

ARTIST BIO

Kathy Cornwell is a printmaker and mixed media collage artist based in Northern Virginia. She has been creating monotypes using a gelatin plate since 2018. An enthusiastic daily hiker and world traveler, Cornwell has a deep sensitivity for the beauty of nature (from the large and majestic to the small and overlooked). Her work blends experience, memory, awe, and angst.

Self-taught in midlife, Cornwell has entered the art world running. Since 2022, she has participated in numerous juried group exhibitions nationwide and her work has been featured in four international art publications including Women United Art Magazine and Suboart Magazine. Her work was shortlisted for the 2022 Contemporary Collage Magazine awards.

ARTIST STATEMENT

I make monotypes and collages that explore the conflict between my love of nature and my very human love of “stuff.” I collect shapes and items I encounter in nature and my surroundings and use them to create imagery and visual texture in my work to illustrate the battle between plastics and plants, organic things versus man-made things, and awe versus anguish and guilt.

My work examines the interplay of opacity and translucency, line on shape, and neutrals against bright colors. As I add more layers, the work becomes deeper and more interesting, urging me along. I’m a lifelong collector of boxes, so naturally my work often features compartment-like shapes that contain unique elements.

I work with found materials as well as intriguing shapes that I encounter on hikes, during travel, or in my daily life. These include things such as icebergs and sea ice, bark, lichen, discarded plastic, medical booties, gauze, string, insects, etc.

Using these found materials and shapes in my art deepens my connection to nature, the environment, and my experience of the world. I combine natural shapes and textures with those of trash to express the tension I feel between my awe of nature and my dismay about the wastefulness of humans (including my harm to the Earth).

For example, I saw an amazing piece of sea ice in the remote north Arctic. Its form shows up in many of my prints and collages, captured and appreciated forever in the shape it held for that one special moment when I observed it. This celebration of nature is in conflict with the egregious amount of resources I used in getting to that region. In my work I’m reckoning with the fact that I’m participating in nature’s devastation at the same moment as I revel in its splendor.

Fairfax Station, VA / United States