Moments in Time

Whether it be an everyday scene such as a crowded bus of passengers staring at their phones or a scene of the artist facetiming with her grandmother who lives in Taiwan, Kathy Liao creates images that are anchored to her memory and highlights the intimacy of shared experience. These paintings feel familiar while documenting specific moments in time or memory. In her artist statement, Kathy explains how her work connects to memory, “Like well-worn film negatives, I revisit images, snapshots, and memories through iterations, until they begin to morph, overlap, and degrade.”

Proximity, 2017
4 Plate Aluminum Lithography on Arches Cover
10 x 12 inches

As if they’re seeing a scene or memory with their own eyes, through the use of a first-perspective view, the viewer is immediately transported into Liao’s paintings. In Surfacing (2019), Liao engages the first perspective via the hand in the painting,  making us believe that we are reaching out through the vivid scene towards the faded figure. The artist’s use of cropping and point-of-view allow the viewer to have a shared experience with the painting. In this way, Liao welcomes the viewer into her work and the paintings become part of our collective memory.

Liao employs a plethora of painting techniques in her work: areas of thin washes, thicker spots of application, portions where she’s scraped and erased away the surface, and reapplying new layers. Each process establishes what is allowed to remain while also leaving a trace of its predecessor. Her material process is similar to how memories change over time: the relationships we have alter, mature, fade away, and are replaced. By utilizing a vivid and unrealistic color palette, her art has a resonating quality that attracts the viewer’s eye. Once in front of one of Liao’s paintings, one sees the fluorescent greens and yellows that provide dimensionality through her employment of value and color harmony. It is through these color strong relationships that Liao’s work becomes realized and her human figures tangible…almost as if we ourselves are reaching for, holding, and interacting with them.

Surfacing, 2019
Oil on canvas
40 x 36 inches

Kathy Liao is currently in the Extension Program at Studios Inc. She received her MFA in Painting from Boston University, and BFA in Painting and Drawing from University of Washington, Seattle.  is currently part of the Artist Services team at Mid-America Arts Alliance in Kansas City. More information about the artist can be found on her website: www.kathyliao.com and on instagram at @kathyliao.art 

Essay by Christian Banez, 2021 Studios Inc exhibition intern