Visual Artist
Artist's Statement
50 years ago my parents brought me, as a baby, from Budapest to the USA. Behind them was the Hungarian revolution, a heroic and seemingly futile people's uprising for freedom. Before them was the vista of a new life filled with possibility, but also with painful loss of their known world.
Ever since I set off on my journey as an artist, this kind of hope and fear have been part of my internal landscape. How well I know that desire to fill up new, virgin territory wth trinkets and memorablia from the past, the desperate effort to recreate the familiar. But the artist's path, pulling towards the unknown, has its own undeniable momentum.
When I started out, 30 years ago, students were questioning the very foundations of civilization--male/female roles, the morality of war, the authority of governments and institutions. How much further could our belief systems be challenged? Much further, it seems. Now, we question the very way our minds work, the chemistry of our individual thoughts and group cultural attitudes. We see the integrity of our personalites to be as much of an illusion as the solidity of that chair in front of us--which is really just an amalgam of tiny molecules held together by--air?
Freedom can be terrifying, because at heart it is such an uncompromising concept. Most of us want a little freedom, and then to stop once it gets uncomfortable. Even artists, with our greater craving for freedom, sooner or later hit our personal wall of terror. What conventions, what mental habits are we so attached to that we don't even see them?
I confess I am afraid.
I am afraid and I am alone.
I am alone, but I'm not alone.
We are alone, but we are not alone.
Artist's Biography
Born in Budapest, Hungary, Kathy Keler has lived most of her life in the United States. Since receiving her B.A. from Bryn Mawr College, and moving to Washington DC in 1980, she has organized and/or participated in numerous exhibitions and art exchange programs. These included residency/exhibit projects in Budapest, Hungary; Lyon, France; and Calcutta, India. Showings of her work have included a group exhibit at the Corcroran Gallery/ Hemicycle in 1993, and solo exhibits at the District of Columbia Arts Center in 1994, at the American Cultural Center in Calcutta in 2000, and at the Washington Theological Union in 2006. She received an individual artist grant in 1995 from the D.C. Commission on the Arts and Humanities.
paintings & installations pre-1996