If drawing belongs to the world of spirit and color to that of the senses, you must draw first to cultivate the spirit
- Henri Matisse 

Katherine Filice draws.

From her earlier, more tightly-rendered work, which first brought her to attention, to this current body of more directly expressive and material-based work aptly titled Human Nature, Katherine Filice draws.

Filice communicates her “one true moment” through the expression of line and repetition, using her exquisite sensitivity to materials and the touch of her hand to share her transformative experience with the viewer.   

"Drawing is the artist's most direct and spontaneous expression, a species of writing: it reveals, better than does painting, his true personality." - Edgar Degas

In this series Human Nature, Filice looks to her walks in the woods, the bark on trees, the smallest of moments or items she might find (that the casual observer might miss) to look inward to find her voice.

Creating a beautiful synthesis from macro to micro and back, she creates a most intimate balance through her intuitive mark and her powers of observation. She makes use of paper as her substrate to render the most universal and ephemeral as personal and timeless.

She creates a space for herself and the viewer to become part of something larger than oneself, giving over to what is deeply felt yet unknown.

Henry David Thoreau once wrote so beautifully, "Live in each season as it passes; breathe the air, drink the drink, taste the fruit and resign yourself to the influence of the earth.” 

I would posit that Filice’s new works embody these aforementioned quotes with this one possible exception: the last line in Thoreau.

For Filice does not resign herself to the influence of the earth—she celebrates it. With courage and a whispered ferocity (perhaps in her newest larger works, not so much a whisper but more of a scream), she explores and takes risks to give light to what she feels most deeply and what she wishes to understand about herself. She is "drawing to cultivate the spirit," as Matisse said, and that is the best of Human Nature.

Michael David

Guggenheim Fellow,

Artist, Gallerist, Curator M. David & Co., Educator