The most beautiful thing we can experience is the mysterious. It is the source of all true art and science. —Albert Einstein

Katherine Filice’s richly poetic mixed media works on paper and canvas pull the viewer deeper into nature’s untamed bounty, replete with impenetrable forests. Wild and untamed, Filice’s thickets are both psychological and metaphorical topographies that map the anxieties of the soul. Long the subject of countless folk tales and utterly unnavigable without breadcrumbs, the woods evoke conflicting emotions of unease and wonder. A case in point is the dramatic work on canvas entitled “A Walk in the Woods (N0. 8), 2025”, which is paradoxically both figurative and abstract. The weathered surface is animated with tangled webs of white lines, jagged and nervous, resembling lightning strikes. The scraggly black lines in the foreground appear like forlorn denuded and burnt twigs.  Filice affixes actual branches and bark to this piece which only amplifies the fragility of the environment in this dangerous moment. However, the bright blue sky peeking through the limbs honors the breathtaking beauty of nature and strikes a hopeful note.

Recent wildfires, always a constant threat in California, have become catastrophic and apocalyptic in scale. Fire and its charred aftermath figure prominently in Filice’s work through her smoky palette of rich browns and variegated grays, along with the blackened bark and scorched boughs that she attaches to her sculpted paper and canvas. With the pulsating piece entitled “Burn Scar (No. 2.) 2021-5”, Filice toggles between chaos and control, chance and intention, as she incorporates found materials into her work. The image she creates here equivocates – appearing as if one is looking down on the ground at the rich loam under our feet or looking up through whippet thin limbs to the sky. This spatial paradox mirrors our apprehensive state of mind where constant uncertainty contributes to a sense of foreboding and dread.

Filice often buries her works inviting alchemical accidents to alter her weathered and crusty surface. With “The Falling, The Rising, 2024”, she not only buries the work but also incorporates earth as a pigment. Wholly abstract, it appears like an aerial view from space as well as a fragmented piece of concrete with an embedded red-hot ember. Filice’s penchant for paper is notable as its porous surface allows her to cut, tear, abrade and fold, eventually building up (along with stucco) to a three-dimensional surface.

Filice is a magician, conjuring the elements of earth, wind and fire to create abstract works that are sensuous, tactile and provocative. Her lyrical titles, distressed surfaces, otherworldly and glowing use of light and evocative palette mine altered states of mind in search of the spiritual. These elegant works embrace decay, while woven into their intricate surfaces are threads of mystery.  Landscapes of the soul, these elegiac works seek to know the unknowable, to illuminate the darkness, to provoke thought and are a call to action to save our valuable resources.

By Nancy Kay Turner
Artist and Art Critic