Bio

Kathleen McCloud’s art investigates shifting cultural and personal terrain.

Her own migration from White Plains, NY where she was born, to the industrial suburbs of the Midwest and the pristine Rocky Mountains before settling in New Mexico in 1983 is at the core of much of her work. Rooting and wandering, she mixes current events, mythology, history, and Home, in its broadest context, to conjure her visual narratives.

Artist residencies serve as a tether for McCloud as she develops her inquiry based art-projects. She credits Jentel Artist Residency in Wyoming, Santa Fe Art Institute, and the Chhaap Foundation for Printmaking in Gujarat, India for support through their residency programs. Her projects include Open Letters from Hotel Central, a surrealist journey based on an inherited correspondence between Henry Miller and a distant relative, Emil Schnellock; Futurology: Welcome to the Third Wave, which reflects on digital media and the 20th century predictions of Futurist writers Marshall McLuhan and Alvin Toffler regarding its effects on the future of social structures; Meta-Tourist (navigating the life tour as one of 7+billion people on earth), and closer to home, Santa Fe River project which questions the changing definition of what is the‘highest and best use’ of the water as we face climate catastrophe.

“Paintings, print constructions, and tools of enchantment are end points on the journey that each of her projects represent, as it picks up debris and silt from previous ones. Nothing is wasted or discarded. Each piece is part of the web; digested, metamorphosing into something spectacularly different but somehow echoing its origins and alluding to its siblings”. Marina de Bellagente la Palma

McCloud’s paintings, mixed media collages and installations have been exhibited in museums and art spaces across the US and are included in private and public collections including: New Mexico Museum of Art, Santa Fe Community College, Hyatt Collection, NM Central Community College NMAIPP and the Herradura Collection.

Artist Statement

My monoprint-based paper constructions, collages and paintings are open ended narratives where current events, history, mythology and place converge.

During a water rights themed residency at the Santa Fe Art Institute, I focused on the lower Santa Fe River which flows by my home in La Cieneguilla, southwest of Santa Fe.  Agua es Vida–water is life–is a popular saying here. It was then that I realized that the river, cottonwood trees and the layered history of the place I called home, was a microcosm of the complexity and challenges of life on planet earth at this time.

Under the influence of the pandemic solitude, pondering the night sky, I felt a social connection, knowing that others were sharing the experience. The adage, ‘we are all in it together’ became visceral. Perhaps we were closer than we had ever been to a global village. In response, my art making shifted from protest and protection to points of connection; what we share, what we love, and what unites us as humans. The earth and sky, our home, and a focus on healing the disconnect that keeps us moving toward climate catastrophe.

I continue to work with what is rooted, what is uncertain, patterns of connection and the chaos that accompanies change. It is an epic narrative that restores me to the web of life and cycles back out into the world in the form of mixed-media art works.