Journey to the Rim Painting

Kat Kristof (born 1986, Budapest, Hungary) is a portrait and landscape artist working primarily with oil and acrylic paints. Influenced by her studies in architecture, her landscape paintings are an imaginative fusion of natural and architectural elements, combining both in new ways and in new forms from her own subjective associations of each, and which are not therefore obliged to follow any strict logical coherence or criteria. Her paintings establish links and connections between the realities of the landscape depicted and those which are imagined and conceived of by the artist. They unite features of the occasionally controversial fields of Asian culture and spirituality as well as the current aestetic trends of leading spatial design styles such as Art Deco. Her interest in Eastern philosophy manifests itself in the artworks through formal references to zen gardens, cloisters or to the perfectly cut and curated elements taken from various forms generated within and by our cultivation of nature. Kats surreal landscape series: 'Art Deco landscapes' focuses on one particular journey within each canvas. A journey that does not involve any particular physical movement or direction, nor is it a spiritual journey leading into the self. Rather, her artworks seek to become a focal point for meditation and imaginative contemplation, creating seamless surfaces for the eye to rest upon, for the air to fill up the voids, and ultimately to lead the mind of the viewer to become vitally and vividly conscious of the present moment, attentive to the here and now. Curiosity for the unknown is a focus for the artists figurative paintings. In her large scale portraits the face of each model is the centre of attention, with large plains of colour used to disguise and to merge the body into the background. They are painted with almost realistic detail and contrast, but make use of distortion and fresh combinations of the numerous figurative elements in her own innovative manner. Kat currently lives and works in Folkestone, United Kingdom.