"Finding Kate"
Knife Edge In Fog, Mt. Katahdin, Maine
Finding Kate #1- 1/5 -2004
These images are photo-etchings printed on printmaking paper from an
inked copper plate. The collaged image of the house was added as the final
element. They are from original color photographs that have been converted
to black and white. I have resized the image and manipulated the contrast
to achieve the print quality and the feeling I wanted in the final etching.
They are
images of places and moments and people my wife Kate Mahoney and I loved
and/or shared. She was a painter and a printmaker. She died June 10, 2003 after
a seven year struggle with breast cancer.
The red house was taken from one of Kate's paintings via PhotoShop.
This red house motif appears in a lot of her paintings and monotypes in
the last couple years of her life. I think it symbolized a
place of serenity and peace
for her. It was where she wanted to go or where she wanted to end up, at
peace with her illness, at peace with the possibility of leaving us, at
peace with the probability of dying. She never got to Mt. Katahdin,
the subject
of several of these etchings. It turned out to be one of those unachieved
goals she had. But Kate climbed a lot of mountains in her struggle with
breast cancer, reaching what she thought was the summit only to turn
around and
see another mountain looming above her yet to climb. My two sons and I
dedicated all of our Katahdin climbs to her since her diagnosis.
We talked about her as we climbed and always thought
she would join us one day at the top. Maybe now she has. Through this work
I am finding Kate, finding her at peace in the world we shared and loved,
and finding her everywhere in the world where our two sons and I still dwell.
BC
April 2, 2004
Oil Paintings © Kate Mahoney
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Prints Available @ info@billcurtsingerphoto.com