In a Cool, Curving World
oil on canvas -- 12" x 15"

To Catherine Arnold, paint is a theatrical medium: It induces the viewer to set aside disbelief and enter under the influence of a calculating spell. She loves the luxury of grand theater; the feeling that nothing is petty or mean. Secret places are opened, new sensations afforded; there is, within a confined space, a sense of great freedom. She thinks a good painting is -- like a carnival -- a combination of beauty, danger and invention. It has nothing to do with the logical progression of fact.

Her paintings are about transitions: the delicate, inherently dangerous spaces between solid or definable time and matter. It is in these difficult, uncertain places that we find an ambiguity bold enough to transcend the rules of our confining knowledge. The boundary, or limen, is a fearful place, because we cannot know what lies beyond; but only if we possess ourselves of the courage to cross it, can we reach new understanding. Ms. Arnold regards a painting as an invitation to the viewer to accompany the creator toward such a discovery of feeling.

Catherine Arnold believes the war which occurs in the mind of the artist, between the competing demands of paint and subject, drives the creative process; firing a form of inquiry or active pursuit which, to the artist, becomes totally compelling. In the finished work, it is the traces of this struggle which provide that vivid spirit which animates all passionate painting.

Slidings, Fields of Liquid Air
oil on canvas -- 10" x 12"

Ceremonies of Arrangement
oil on canvas -- 84" x 84"

Earth Colors
oil on canvas -- 12" x 9"