I also just like the mark that the tool makes and the hard and soft edges I can play with and the slabs. But from there I just run with it. I just let the continuing ongoing repetition of movements inform the work.

The other thing about a big flat drywall tools that I use is that it’s really easy to just wipe parts out. I have tools that range from an inch to two feet wide, so, I can quickly edit and simplify. It is fun and it’s fast and I certainly feel that feeling of being alive! It all happens so quickly.  The tool allows me to be as obsessively repetitive as I want to be and still keep it fresh. I just continue to try and trust that process.

There are a lot of decisions I make but the decisions happen after they happen, if that makes sense? It’s so fast, that most of the decisions aren’t conscious.

JW: One thing that a lot of people don’t know is that you studied fibers in your Masters program from Davis and I wondered if you could talk about how studying fibers led you to the work that you are doing now?

MK: I started out as a kid who just needed to make things. I was a knitter and hung out a lot with my grandmother learning that skill. I continued to be really into it in high school and college. I always loved thread. So, when I decided I wanted to explore more art after college it was an obvious entry point because I had so much natural familiarity and dexterity with it. I ended up seeing a lot of quilts and following the quilt-making craze that was starting in the 80s and 90s, and I naturally gravitated toward that medium for the colors and the squares and the shapes and the patterns. So it was this natural process of one thing leading to another.

JW: Now that you mention it, of course I see the relationship between your work and quilting, but I don’t know if I would have thought of that….Is that where you developed your sense of color?

The Gee’s Bend quilt makers and the other improvisational quilters like Rosie Lee Tompkins were (and still are) a huge inspiration. The asymmetry and the improvisational approach was a big turning point in my thinking about pattern and shape and color. I think that approach is still very important to what I am doing now in paint. Those artists were always tweaking the square and the line and throwing in random pieces of fabrics and odd colors. There is tons of repeating forms and motifs in those quilts as well, as they are often based on simple traditional quilt patterns, but the art is keeping it random and wild and fresh at the same time.

I was quilting a lot and then at some point before grad school, I started painting because I wanted to learn about color in a way that quilt making didn’t allow for. I needed to mix my own colors and learn about color in a more immediate way.

JW: So you are working from the energy and from a place of where the repetition of the shapes and the lines and the colors take you?

MK That’s really genuinely true. And, now that we are talking about the repetition in my work now, it’s funny to think back and remember how I could sit for hours knitting.  It is a completely repetitive, boring thing to do. I don’t know why I have that capacity or ability or interest or talent for working that way. But there is something about it that I just love. It frees the mind somehow. In fact, now that we are talking about it, I remember hearing that there is evidence that there is a drug that is released in the brain when doing small motor skill/ repetitive movements, (it’s like dopamine or something that gets released). So, (laughs) I think I do paint to soothe and grapple with a lot of anxiety and pain and fear and sadness of life. Hard and sad things happen that you can’t do anything about. And so I paint because it’s something I can do. I couldn’t do anything about whatever growing pains I was going through in high school, or my parents divorce or whatever, but I could knit. I can always sit down and paint. This is something I can do.

JW: So, it’s almost a self soothing activity.

Kathleen King: Is it like a creation of order out of all the chaos?

MK, Yes, I mean, everyone knows and appreciates, thankfully, that there’s some chaos! Thankfully, life isn’t easy and contained as a grid, perfectly regular. It would be boring. So that’s why it’s interesting when the straight lines start to go off kilter or the square isn’t quite even. Because that’s what life does. You can’t make a straight line, really. And similarly, (laughs) you can’t plan your life. Suddenly you are heading left when you meant to go straight.

KK: Also you’re talking about line because you are talking about knitting yarn. In your work the edge is kind of important (which is a kind of line). You are kind of weaving lines in a way in your work, even though you are working with planes.

MK: Yes, the edges are a very important question in my work and I think most artists ultimately have to deal with that issue. Does this painting continue or does it just stop at the edge of the canvas? Sometimes I want to stop the eye and sometimes I want the painting to feel like it’s going to go forever. Mostly, I find that I am containing the space but I like to give people a way out of the painting. Otherwise it feels too confined. If I want to convey a sense of confinement, though, I can explore that.

KK: Yes, in life I think there is containment or going forever. They both exist and they are both part of life.

JW: It is interesting given that you are into the exploration of repetition and motion and line, when you’re painting they are not as strictly repetitive as say Agnes Martin, or someone who just does repetitive strokes. Your paintings have a sense of space. Which makes sense because I understand that when you started painting you started into landscape painting?

MK: Yes, I did all kinds of painting when I first started, but landscape was always a favorite. I learned how to create space and use the basic tools of constructing realistic space. I think it does impact the work, although I don’t think about that much while painting. I do see these pieces as urban landscapes.  I am playing with dark and light and that sense of push and pull with space, and in a way my paintings are like little worlds of pattern and color just like the city itself. Maybe they are cities where I want to live? They look like fun places to live to me.

KK: And you work with texture too, of course….Were your quilts full of texture?

MK: Well, whenever you work with fabric it automatically has texture. But with painting it isn’t necessarily there. For a long time I painted flat paintings that were more cloudy mysterious landscape spaces. There was very little texture. They weren’t identifiable spaces but explored nature on a micro/macro level. I got to the end of that body of work I got really bored. I missed texture too much.

KK: How did you discover or start to use the scraper tool?

MK: (Laughs) I was at the end of that body of work, and there was a painting that got damaged in my studio. I had to fill in an area that was dented. I went and bought this scraper tool to help fill in the area. I liked the mark it was making, so, I went over to a couple small canvases that I had and I painted these two beautiful little paintings. That was it. I didn’t go back.

I love working this way, but who knows? I think as an artist it’s important to go through phases and to try things and explore and to go really deeply into bodies of work and see them through.

JW: You mentioned the unconscious earlier and I wanted to follow up on that. I feel that one can choose to paint something, or go into painting and let it arise from your unconscious, but it’s a much more deeply psychological process and can be a more painful way to work. How much to you feel is conscious or how much do you feel like it arises from your unconscious?

MK:  My process is mostly intuitive and unconscious. I actually try not to think too much because that seems to get in the way. Yes, I think some painters start out with a very clear picture of what they want to do, and I hate those people (laughing).

For me, it generally goes like this: I go in with some sort of idea of what I want to do. There is some palette I want to explore or some composition or formal idea. And then I attempt to do that for the first hour or so. Then I figure out that that’s not going to work. It’s a disaster! So I loosen up because it’s failed and I just give it up and destroy the thing. That’s when something interesting usually happens. I will say to myself, “screw it,” and throw in some crazy bright pink or black, or wipe out ¾ of the piece. That is usually when the painting emerges and I catch it before it’s destroyed completely. I go with whatever has emerged from the destruction and finish it, or go through more cycles of building it up and then letting it go and breaking it down. So, basically, I have to let the painting go, so to speak, for it to work. And that process of building up and letting go can happen at different points.

It can be stressful and intense. With one swipe I can take out half the painting! Suddenly, it’s an entirely different thing. So, there’s some anxiety involved. And there’s a lot of processing that has to happen very quickly. It’s too fast to think much, but of course, at points I have to be objective and access what I’ve got in front of me.

JW: One thing people may not know about your work is that you do paintings in one or two days. Is that the case, even with the large ones? 

MK:  Yes, my process is really fast. Oil paints notoriously take a long time to dry, but they do get tacky within a few days if it’s warm out. Once the thick paint starts to dry, even a little, it becomes too sticky to work with. A skin forms on the top and I can’t move the slabs around anymore. Because of that, the window of time feels short.

JW: I don’t know a lot of painters who have that kind of pressure to finish.

MK: Yeah, and on top of that, when I have a painting in process I think about it a lot. I hold it in my presence and in my consciousness until it’s done. I am in it. Even if it’s Saturday night and I am out with my friends I am thinking about the unfinished piece in the back of my mind. If I am really excited about where a painting is going I can be up at 6 am on a Sunday morning and skip the coffee and just head back to my studio to see what’s going to happen next!

It’s fun, and it’s a neat place to be, but it’s also nice to close the door and be done. It’s just how I am. I am fully engaged with it while it’s in process. It’s so intense that I need those punctuation marks to get a break. I haven’t always been that way with my art making process, but it’s the nature of this body of work because of the drying issue. It’s not a great quality, but…

KK: I think it is. You are intensely involved with your painting and that’s where the joy comes through.

MK Yes, that’s true. I am fully engaged with the work, that’s for sure. It’s wonderful and exhausting!

JW:  And with a full time job?

MK: Yes, but I can’t be in that intense fully-engaged, unconscious and psychological space of a painting all the time. It’s too much for me. I know artists that want to be there all the time, but for me it’s nice to have time to step away.

JW: The roll of color is really important to your work and pretty transformational and I would like to hear more about that. It’s a part of what makes it feel particular…Almost like Diebenkorn in a way? I see color in your work as pretty specific.

MK: I definitely was influenced by him, and see myself in a line of Bay Area painters. I think there is a joy in the way color works here with the bright light and shininess and the crispness. The blues and yellows that you see living in the Bay area are wonderful. Coming from the Northwest, I do have an appreciation of the murky grey beauty too. The mists and the fogs are wonderful. So, I think both aesthetics are at play in my work.  

Ultimately, I try not to think about the color too much. I spent a lot of years practicing with different palettes and combinations, but now I just go for whatever is around in my studio. I try and take the lesson from the quilt makers, and just throw things in and work with what I have. I have a ton of paint and I just grab what’s there.

So, yes, there is a great joy in my color and in my painting process in general. I wouldn’t paint if I didn’t enjoy it! Although I hope that my paintings go beyond some simplistic clichéd notion of beauty, I don’t paint to explore really hard or dark subjects. I don’t really want to spend my time in that place. So I don’t!  

KK: (Laughing)…. That sounds like a good place to stop.