Cat Crotchett has been a professional artist for over 30 years and is known for her original paintings focusing on abstract pattern. Cat earned BFAs in Painting and Art History from the University of Illinois, Champaign-Urbana, and an MFA in Art from Bowling Green State University, Bowling Green, Ohio. Her current work uses abstract pattern in compositions that are engaged in some form of conflict, suggesting our shared moment in American history, our creative resilience, and transformative struggles.
Cat has been a regular presenter and instructor at the International Encaustic Conference in Provincetown, Massachusetts, and has taught painting workshops in the United States and in Indonesia.
She has an extensive exhibition record that includes solo exhibitions at Vanderbilt University, the University of Illinois Chicago, the Maryland Institute of Art and Barbaran Segaragunung Gallery in Yogyakarta, Java, Indonesia. In addition, she has a considerable record of international and national group exhibitions, has been recognized through various grants, and has been a fellow at several artist colonies – including a 2022 Golden Foundation for the Arts experimental residency. Her work is represented in numerous private and public collections. She was the 2021 Distinguished Faculty Scholar at Western Michigan University, and 2015 College of Fine Arts Roehrick Distinguished Professor also at WMU. She teaches painting in the Gwen Frostic School of Art. Cat lives and works in Kalamazoo, Michigan. She is represented by Addington Gallery in Chicago, IL.
Statement
My work uses patterns to vividly represent human emotions and experience, and to convey not just beauty but tension. These paintings represent an intersection of information, emotion, and physical limitations. The patterns and colors inhabit spaces that are similar, but not the same – suggesting multiple realities in the same composition. Each composition is engaged in some form of conflict, framed in the context of differing perceptions of experience, national identity, economic instability, and uncertainty.
My paintings interweave patterns painted in vibrant colors and textured surfaces. I use traditional Indonesian batik stamps, along with stencils I create, to make and alter designs. The painting process is both meditative and reflective. The image created is activated through nuanced changes in form, multiple placements, or new placements and patterns. Information is hidden, built up, excavated and scratched into encaustic paint. Without consciously thinking about it, I place parameters and restrictions on almost every level of decision making. I limit my palette or the values and intensity of colors; color and materials are layered in a particular order to symbolize cultural sediment; I commit to the imprint of the batik stamp as part of the work’s history and sometimes don’t manipulate the paint past this point so as not to alter the authentic imprint of that pattern stamped in time; when I fuse the paint with heat, using a heat gun or torch, I don’t try to control how the paint melts – my goal is to accept the heat’s effect on the wax, rather than try to control it. Like the human condition, my process is a dance between intention and acceptance.