Seeing Through

Kayla Mohammadi

July 13 - Sept. 9, 2023

About the Show

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Through drawing and collage, I work towards a simple expression of what I am seeing and feeling. Abstracting space through color and mark is what keeps me engaged with painting.

Image: Adrianne Mathiowitz Photography

After all, the true seeing is within. ~ George Eliot

Kayla Mohammadi’s Seeing Through first captures one’s attention and then imagination with glorious color. In conjunction with form, color conjures unexpected places. Lattices overlap, creating interconnected planes and energy. Figurative elements move in and out of the lattices, interacting with these vibrant fields. The result is an image that is new, yet familiar; known, but exciting. One recognizes the bowl of fruit on the canvas and also sees through that image to something more; sees through to the pulsating universe that holds the image of the objects it created. Mohammadi produces a strange new world that is, in fact, our beautiful own.

Within each of my paintings I have worked on creating an abstract visual space by overlapping marks and color. Space flattens in one area and expands in another. In some of the paintings you get a sense of looking through several layers. Marks are made as a final layer in one painting or mixed in the cacophony of light, color, and air in another. At times I forgo freehand and use a found stencil. The focus then turns to pattern and the interruption of pattern. In the end, I hope my paintings are seen as both beautiful and unfamiliar.

~ Kayla Mohammadi