Eight Paintings

My work evolves from themes based on contradiction and movement, forces that materialize in collage, drawing, painting, and installation. I work in a variety of media and techniques, as they provide a fluid-structure for the exploration of disparate ideas and give me a broad vocabulary for creating unpredictable combinations.

The artistic tension in my work arises out of contrasting elements: still versus energetic, organic versus synthetic, fragility versus strength, flat versus relief, wall versus the room, and order versus chaos. My work allows these opposites to co-exist and agitate within physical and psychic space.

I am especially fascinated by the relationship between chaos and order, as a visual experience and a symbol for life processes; with the theory that there are underlying structures and patterns within the randomness of chaotic systems. Scientists observe that chaotic behavior exists in many systems of nature, ecology, psychology, and political science. In the paintings I present here for Venti, I have created random forms, while interspersed among the layers inhabiting these abstracted spaces are moments of order. These take form in floating or overlapping armatures, and at times patterns, that provide stability and compositional support from meandering lines and haphazard, intersecting shapes. Some paintings represent my metaphorical reactions to events of the world, some to internalized anxieties, and some are products of serious play. Some are a combination of any or all of these.

In recent years, I discovered the concept, “edge of chaos," which denotes a transitional moment between order and disorder as it exists within a variety of systems. This transition period between the two regimes is an area of constrained instability that produces a constant, vibrant interplay between order and disorder, scientists stating it is a moment of heightened creative change. In any system or process, there are forces pushing towards organization and others introducing unpredictability.  At this kind of moment in my studio process, I feel full of discovery, an instant when I lose a sense of time, immersed in an intense creative flow.  When confronting a surface, I spontaneously build chaotic movement with layered colors, shapes, and lines, and when the time is right when the "edge" is palpable, I insert moments of order and stability.

My experiences with improvisational dance impart an acute awareness of the body and space, inserting itself into my work, even though my work is not figurative. Neuroscientists who study creativity state that we use the same neural systems to feel our bodies as to experience creative inspiration. They have found that a visceral connection to the body is a huge motivator of creativity.  My processes are an extension of connections to the moving body and space and a need to be present on the edges of creative energy.

Karen Snouffer’s paintings crackle like static-laced voices coming through a receiver, or perhaps, breath struggling against a sharp dry cough and lungs with limited capacity. Her pointed lines and electric shapes evoke a chaos that can be either suffocating or liberating. Works like Touching, Not Touching or Specimen 2 (both 2020) burst with contrasts of color and form, with almost-familiar shapes emerging and receding in the chaos. The more muted colors of Sky Scaffold (2020) evoke the first generation of European abstraction, specifically the Delaunay’s spectral tones. The rounded plane in the upper half of Helmet (2020) holds a tumbling, tangled mass that obscures two rectangular, wood-colored structures. I cannot help but think of clogged lungs here, the feeling of trying to take a deep breath with bronchitis or after a night of chain-smoking, the upper horizontal rectangle the bronze on a pack of Marlboro-27s, with the longer rectangle the sleek vertical shape of a Juul. Where the bottom of this “lung” intersects with the lower part of the picture plane a wood-grain pattern pools like fluid slowly accumulating.

While this is one smoker’s interpretation, Snouffer has said that her paintings reflect a combination of play and anxiety, centered around themes of contradiction and movement, such as the forces that might inhibit smooth movement of air in and out of the lungs. This tension between order versus chaos is a fundamental building block of abstraction, but with Snouffer’s commitment to the possibilities in this dichotomy it feels fresh. These contrasts of colors, shapes and forms imbue her paintings with kinetic energy that is equally playful and menacing, depending on the air quality.

- Charles Keiffer