Untitled (Self Portrait) Painting

Kate Ryan, born in London, UK lives in California's Orange County. She is an abstract painter drawing inspiration from the natural world, music, movement, and meditation to create color-driven abstract paintings rich with a personal lexicon of marks and shapes. Her paintings play with the tension between abstraction and figuration; exploring themes of place, presence, absence, remembrance, and transformation, reflecting her personal experience of life. Free-form drawing with loose and gestural brushstrokes imbue the paintings with a dynamic energy that captures a sense of movement and vitality. Surfaces are sometimes sanded or scraped to excavate and reveal glimpses of former layers underneath, spray paint denotes spontaneity and fleetingness.