Email: Marc Katano

More work by Marc Katano

The fundamental basis of my work is the act of inscription itself,
engaging questions of texture and shape. Though my compositions are
organic in form, they are inspired not by the emulation of nature but
by the physicality of human expression, as made manifest in the
precise motions of Japanese calligraphy.

I would like to explain a little of my current technique. First, the
ground color is painted on as a wash. Now imagine a droplet of water
drying first from the outside edges while the center remains liquid.
Using this idea, I paint ellipse forms freehand, with a brush, over the
whole surface of the canvas, letting them dry for some time, then
spraying off the surface with water, leaving behind the dried edges of
the forms. More washes are painted between layers of ellipses, and I
build the composition as I work along intuitively.

My visual vocabulary is made up of the simplest, most natural
movements of the hand and arm, reflecting this physical activity of
mark making. It is a self-referential language in which each line
represents nothing more than its own creation and each piece finds
meaning in the harmony of its own internal structure.

© Marc Katano 2008