Monday 23 December 2013

Becoming Kathy Durst Artist By Viewing Her Work

By Marcia Marks


Kathy Durst artist is an American art teacher from Redwing, Minnesota. Growing up in Rockford, Illinois, she earned a teaching certificate in Visual Arts and a Bachelor of Fine Arts Degree from the Austin campus of the University of Texas. Retired from teaching, it was not long before she was invited to participate in her first solo showing of her ark-full of paper painted collage animals in 2014 at the Ross Gallery.

A quarter of a century of teaching art has exposed the artist to almost every conceivable medium and technique. A lot of her work that is currently available for viewing online is paper painting collage stuff. Her "Lammie" is a great example of what can be achieved with creative use of scraps of paper and paint.

"Lammie", and her "Roseatte Spoonbill" illustrate the amazing amount of depth and detail that can be achieved with fun and simple techniques and materials. "Yulka, " a collage showing a young girl in a swimming pool using an empty soft drink bottle for floatation. This really shows off the three dimensional effects that can be achieved with paper paint collage.

The beauty of this technique is that the materials are cheaply and readily available and the method can be taught to the under-fives. Ms Durst, with a level of maturity and experience that comes with retirement age, is a virtuoso. View some tutorials of paint collage on the Internet and you will be more able to fully appreciate what the artist is about.

Most of the subjects of Durst's work that you will find involve animals; this is the theme of her Ross Gallery exposition. In the whimsical, "Take Me Along, " you see two scuba divers working their way through a sea of atlas cuttings and musical notes. They look really happy. Try THAT with a set of watercolors and paper.

The artist's work inspires creativity. You can't help but seek out more and more examples of what she has produced. You will also be driven to learn more about the technique and start imagining the fruits of your own efforts. In no time at all, you will feel like a part of the artistic community and assembling your own materials and working space.

Her "Rose, " is a different kettle of fish. Apart from being a departure from animals, it may or may not be another example of the painted paper collage technique. It could be. She is that good. The blossom is in shades of flamingo and coral, with little splashes of the main hues dotted around in the surrounding foliage.

Kathy Durst artist's use of stencils and textured paper in her collages gives her work depth and character. For most of the rest of us, our results would turn out more like a hastily put together Mothers Day present. Find out the date of her next show and pencil it in. You are going to want to pay her a visit.




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