Statement

Kate Jacob’s abstract paintings and drawings are the in-between gaps between our known and unknown. They provide a window into a world where hazy lines and shapes rise and fall, as something at the edge of consciousness unravels, a place where there are no words, or that words alone can’t reach.

Using mixed media of acrylics inks and pastel on canvas and paper, punctuated marks and patterns repeat, jump from page to page, canvas to canvas to try to capture and find the out of reach. Applied in layers, washes contrast with thick, opaque paint; sharp and soft edges hold together a space in which sit a mass of punctuated marks. Using shape, line, colour, and surface she navigates certainty and doubt and is driven by a relentless need to find meaning; revised repeatedly, each attempt is hopeful of a resolution. They emerge from the tension between the need for control and letting go; embracing the possibility of chaos.

Where rational thought and intuitive responses meet, emotional, analytical and physical responses to materials create works that remind us of somewhere familiar but are unplaceable. Often working with themes of loss, grief, searching for connection and seeking the unknown, they are as fully aware as they are oblivious. They talk of things closely held and far away, things known, felt at the edges or unexplained. Kate Jacob’s practice brings to surface

She works from a studio on the edge of the city centre where the walls are used to capture thoughts, ideas and colours; scribbling phases, dabbing colour, testing out marks onto surrounding surfaces to make sense of and inform the process.