Three by Three: Guest Artists in Focus
QUESTION 2. Many of your pieces feel like visual journals rather than resolved statements. How important is process over outcome in what you make?
ANSWER 2. I have many times been told my pieces feel more like visual journals rather than resolved statements, and they are. Personally, I am often resolving issues I've been dealing with to myself. Trying to bring my emotions, feelings or intuition to a visual picture to make more sense of it all, to understand and accept myself more than I ever have before. The process of allowing myself to express my hidden, secret or forgotten emotions, to realize something unknown yet important about who I am, far more outweighs any outcome I create. It's the process, the journey of learning and growing that matters most to me personally. My pieces of art are moments in my life, a memory, a thought or a feeling. Not well thought out stories with a beginning, middle and final conclusion. They are moments of time in my life. My art is the Journal of Kathryn Fry's Magnificent Mind.
Kathryn Michelle Fry
Picture Drawer, Painter, Paper Mache Artist
MEDIUM: pencil, pen, alcohol inks, colored pencils, chalk, charcoal, paper, wood, canvas, fabric, acrylic, watercolor, gauche paints
BIO: Fell in love with art as a little girl. I grew up in an alcoholic family; my blank paper and crayons were the place to find sanctuary. So I learned, studied and excelled my own expectations having some pieces placed in museums, art shows and festivals.
A terribly abusive marriage led me to drug and alcohol addiction. The art faded away until I had to make sense of my thoughts and began working with paper mache forming masks and statues. My confusion, anger and self loathing were visible. I had found the creative spark. Art is my C-PTSD therapy, turning irrational thoughts into something real. I work with a variety of mediums: pencils, watercolors with contrasting lines on wood or glass adding texture through paper mache and caulk allowing vivid look into trauma.
AI has no guts, no grime, no soul, no tears or nights of mania trying to get a detail correct. There are no memories or trauma for the algorithms-just 0&1’s in different order to create the perfect almost instantly.
EMAIL: kmf62678@gmail.com
QUESTION 3. Art brut often resists categorization or polish. What does making work outside conventional art expectations give you personally that more traditional paths might not?
ANSWER 3. Throughout the years, I've tried to add my works onto many different platforms of Categorical Art, such as impressionism, abstract or surrealism, and have been denied access to their inclusion. The Art Brut category is the only group of artists who have welcomed me with open arms. Brut Art resists polish and categorization rather than traditional paths with their particular rules, boundaries and separation. This type of art has given me the freedom to express whatever I care to express. What I want, how I want, any way or medium I want and it is positively welcome and enjoyed by anyone who is moved by something in my art. I love the unpolished and imperfect raw look, it is real life, real thought, real grit. It is honest and unfiltered and Brut Artists are coming up with innovative, passionate fabulous art styles unique to the world due to the fact there are no rules or regulations on what to make.
QUESTION 1. Working on wood panels gives your drawings a physical weight that paper doesn’t. How does that solid surface affect the way you approach vulnerability in your imagery?
ANSWER 1. Drawing on wood very much gives my work a sense of a physical weight and heft that paper does not carry. The rough surface of the once living entity, the bumps and knots, cracks and splinters, the perfect imperfections are beautiful in themselves. The heaviness of the wood gives my unveiled emotions a shield, an emotional anchor, that seems to shelter my secrets. Compared to paper, so thin and delicate, so easily ruined and torn. Paper is fleeting and weak, lighter than a feather, so easy to drift away and become forgetful. Paper cannot with stand the energy built up inside me. The paper tears open and I ruined whatever I had worked so hard on with all my might. Yet wood can handle me. I cannot hurt it, I cannot break it. I'm not going to hurt it's feelings. It allows for physical force to dig my emotions and thoughts into it or slightly graze the surface. It is solid and lasted years of storms and weather. Wood seems very masculine to me and that being said, I am drawn to create a balance between the masculine and the feminine. My emotions just free float onto the wood and I try to add curving lines and delicate detail work or deep dark lines I add for emphasis or importance. It's pure enjoyment to Decorate raw wood and embellish it's strength into something balanced with feminine beauty, long curvy, slender lines can turn into anything. Since I am an artist who is very emotional, my true feelings are so blatant in my work and that leaves me vulnerable to viewer. It is uncomfortable to feel naked and exposed for anyone to see the real me, my scars and all. But perhaps I am helping someone else with their struggles. We are not alone.
"Tower Of Song", 2024, ink on wooden panel, 6"x4'. Thanks to Vaden Isaac Cooper
All copyright and reproduction rights are reserved by Kathryn Michelle Fry.
Artwork may not be reproduced in any form without the artist's express written permission.
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"Sweet and Salty", 2023, Ink on paper,10"x12", Thanks to Keely Elizabeth Cooper
"Year Of The Purple Dragon", 2025, Alcohol inks, canvas, colored pencils, black ink, 12"x 10", Thanks to Calyn Grace Fry Rannila