Katie Thomas Artist

Seen This Century
100 Contemporary New Zealand Artists
A COLLECTOR'S GUIDE
by Warwick Brown

Find available formats of this book at Random House Books

Katie Thomas

Although Katie Thomas trained as a painter, her work over the last seven years, until 2008, has been dominated by other media - wood, old books and transparent industrial resin. Her wall-mounted pieces are literally encased in, and partly made of, resin blocks. Working with this toxic substance, used in boatbuilding, has meant that Thomas had to abandon the artist's smock and easel for a boiler suit and breathing mask, and the studio for a ventilated shed.

Resin has the merits of allowing layers of material to be viewed as if floating in liquid, and to be cast into shaped moulds (cf. Kregar, 53). Thomas has used the medium to produce works with a level, glossy surface, but a three-dimensional feel. She has done much more than immerse and preserve objects. Small lengths of raw or coloured wood, and similar offcuts made from old books, were joined side by side and end to end to make up a base. The books' pages were glued together one by one, a time-consuming process, and the resulting blocks could then be cut up and mounted edge-on.  Fragments of text could be applied to the wood, so that the edges of books and their text could be seen at the same time. The final effect was similar to an irregular parquet floor. The whole construct was then drowned in resin. During this phase, I Thomas added extra material, such as her own hair, strands of wool, found objects, small resin plaques and stains of rich, dark pigments. All of this lay between the honey-coloured backing assembly and the surface, so the effects were translucent, dimensional and seductive.

With these works Thomas created icons for individual identification and contemplation. Instead of a decorative effect, she tried to capture something emotional or spiritual. Circular and interlocking shapes imparted a sculptural quality. Some pieces were minimal, rejoicing in the honeyed tonality imparted by the resin to the underlying wood. Other pieces told a story. At Thomas' 2003 exhibition Walk the Day, residents of Christchurch immediately recognised a city map with the Avon winding through it, and an aerial view of the Waimakariri River appeared in a four-part work in 2004. Other pieces were dominated by crosses or intertwined Celtic symbols, with place names and fragments of contour lines appearing here and there.

The artist's 2006 exhibition Casting Purls featured a purl-stitch motif that was sinuous and rhythmic. Jonathan eaker noted: 'The beautiful melding of intensely coloured motifs, warmly glazed and receding into murky depths, were housed by the structure of the knitted weave. Its superimposed structure trained the eye and constrained it from restlessly roaming over the pictorial surface.'

In 2008 Thomas began drawing and painting again, extending the knitting theme into loose, layered, delicate abstractions of great subtlety and originality. These works resemble crocodile skin, the tangled weeds beneath the surface of a pond, or the marks on an ice-skating pond.