b. 1976 on unceded ancestral lands of Duwamish and Coast Salish people
I consider myself a process-driven expressionistic painter. Inspired by organic matter, nature, beauty and decay, emotional environments, moments, memories, movement, and movement between worlds, I strive to develop compositions that convey a kind of meaningful chaos, moxie, presence, and life energy.
Kate Fluckinger Kline KLINE is a matrilineal name
I paint to get away, to move into another dimension, to enter a new space. I experiment with color, forms, nonforms, brushwork, layering, and text. Color is affecting and symbolic; it moves us; and it never ceases to motivate me.
In addition to a love for all colors, I am drawn to organic and untamed shapes, things growing, moving, changing, forming and falling apart, processes, like life, and the unseen. I also like structure, boundaries, lines, and containment -sometimes fleeting or illusory.
and
all that is liminal, a state that is ambiguous and somewhat hidden
a state of being in-between or at a threshold
unlike subliminal, liminal is barely perceptible, where boundaries between worlds/forms/experiences are not well defined
liminality speaks to a spaciousness or muddied between
sometimes hazy or fuzzy, blurred, like a swamp in fog
like transitioning from a dream to wakefulness, or darkness to light
a place of knowing, but not knowing why
where forms and colors collide, penetrate and influence each other
back and forth forever
through abstracted forms, landscapes, flora, fauna, and figures
I seek to enter, depart, describe, live in and leave, this transitional space.
I was born in Seattle, where I currently reside, though I grew up outside the city, between towns, in a somewhat rural not quite suburban undefined environment, at the edge of a county—-—liminal from the start. My first friends were the tall Douglas fir trees standing like guardians around our house above a lake. Music, movement, water, walks, and creating was most important to me then, just as it is today. Other treasured work includes a lifelong study/practice of ancient astrology—and volunteering in a women’s prison: where, since 2007, I’ve provided 1:1 confidential emotional support and listening to incarcerated people.
Painting and creating have been an anchor for me throughout life, as well as a transformational practice to navigate grief and loss. Throughout covid I collected a percentage of sales from new work to go to supporting programs benefiting children of incarcerated women. See that project here. Now I’ve created and am facilitating a painting practice/project in the prison called PAINTING INSIDE OUT.