Kate Yesberg | Nina: {Suite} Wellington
"I am drawn to process and exploring how colour, light and form interact. Equally important to my life and practice is following my intuition; being playful and inquisitive. I see abstraction as a representation of emotional states. I am interested in capturing the ebb and flow of a person's inner life. What cannot be articulated, like in these paintings the experience of grief and settling into new states of being in the world."
Pursuing a geometric mode of abstraction, Yesberg's paintings navigate dynamics between tension and release, finding a balance between these states to take on a meditative rhythm. Built layer upon layer atop a black canvas, vibrant shapes and patterns intersect and fuse together to form lilting compositions of colour, line, and movement. Painting without premeditation, Kate adapts her compositions intuitively until an aesthetic and affective equilibrium is reached. This mentality is similarly present in her naming conventions, with the title of each series intuited by the artist based on its inherent 'feeling' or 'energy'.
Kate describes the title 'Nina' as feeling grounded and embodying a sense of power. This is also the name of the protagonist in her grandma's fictional writing, and so carries a feeling of intergenerational potential passed down through the women in her family.
