Kay Grams

Painting + Assemblage || After years of doing assemblage, a medium so confined within its materials, I’m excited these days by the freedom of painting which feels boundary-less. I begin each painting without a plan and apply layers until an idea emerges. I use collage to create texture and sometimes to add a literal element elicited by or in response to a piece. I like to think of my most recent paintings, Better Worlds, as maps of foreign lands; places harmonious, principled and just. A better world, unknown perhaps, where truth is valued and decency matters. They’re my small respites from the reality of looming authoritarianism. The prior series, Passages, looks at ideas of relocation, place-finding and the stories that might accompany a migration. Whatever the medium, my pieces, especially the assemblages, employ elements that push for a resolution of sorts. I’m particularly interested in this innate, often subconscious, urge to ‘resolve’ and make sense of what is not available to us. In some form, this concept is at play in anything I make.