Kathleen Waterloo “GRAM” 2010 122×91 cm, encaustic on panel

Kathleen Waterloo’s work is somewhere between the freedom of the Dadaists and the constructive spirit of the Bauhaus. Her trajectory reminds  very much of that from Paul Klee (and not only because of the extend of her production) and behind the rigor and austerity from Piet Mondrian’s grids I can always perceive her touch of irony.

Kathleen Waterloo’s grids and bands of flickering chromatic strokes replicate those of  the city grids from Mondrian, but jet full of dynamism, expressing sometimes the rush movement of traffic whereas others the slowness of a walk.

Waterloo squeezes to end the color brightness and expressive stroke that encaustic media allows, without forcing the material in any way, but bringing it to the maximum of expression. This way of painting, always attentive to what the material demands, leads her to outstanding picture sizes far beyond the self-imposed limitations of  the small and repetitive square formats of today’s encaustic standards.

Mondrian left the Stijl movement once Theo van Doesburgh (co-founder of the movement) stealthily introduced the first diagonals into his compositions, I wonder what Mondrian had  done if he had seen Waterloo’s winding bands creeping  in the park.

The piece above titled GRAM is from a series called ‘map quest ‘ where  Kathleen Waterloo map-quested her studio address to two dozen art museums around the country. They are titled for the specific museum: GRAM is the acronym for the Grand Rapids Art Museum