Painting For a Space
Painting for a Space” is a collaboration between two painters, Katie Davis and Barbara Campbell Thomas. For this room-sized painting, Katie and Barbara worked with time and distance as conceptual drivers as Katie lives in Ohio and Barbara in North Carolina. The two painters emailed ideas back and forth, talked via Zoom and exchanged drawings and collages through the mail, as a starting point for the project. In these ways, “Painting for a Space” began well before the actual painting emerged. Early conversations between the artists established their main goal of approaching the expanse of Beeler’s Project Space as a painting. What does it mean to consider a room as a painting? This show came together over two intense days of collaborative work. As any painting is made, Katie and Barbara considered the conversation between shape, surface and color, forming connections between these formal parts and pieces to make a whole. Both painters use paint and textiles in their individual studios, but for this collaboration, even more domestic materials were considered including wood, blankets, and baskets. Ultimately Katie Davis and Barbara Campbell Thomas created “Painting for a Space” to learn how the definition of painting might expand and grow within their respective practices and beyond. They have plans to continue their collaboration, allowing this piece to grow in complexity over time.