Karin Mori
Karin Mori
Karin Mori

Statement, 2011

The drawings serve as portals to an interior landscape -- a place where memory and imagination mingle, proliferate, and conjure up dream-like narratives. Like a tropical forest, the imagery is dense, fecund, and constantly changing. The merging of botanical, anatomical and man-made forms results in abstract, intuitive juxtapositions and uncanny hybrids.

I draw upon motifs of personal significance, most notably from the landscape, architecture, artifacts and memories I associate with the Hawaiian Islands and other places I have lived. I also draw upon family history as passed down through photographs and stories, filling in the gaps with my imagination.

Although I often begin a piece with some of these figurative references (coming from sketches, printed material or memory), the images frequently mutate and become embedded and reconfigured within layers of marks and pigment. The accumulation of repeated additions and re-workings results in a complex, composite image that presents a distillation of many decisions and actions over a period of time. The original forms nevertheless continue to exert a powerful subliminal presence from within the work, seeping up to the surface and leaving recognizable traces throughout the finished piece.

The immense flexibility of my working process, and the nuance and detail achievable through simple materials, are central aspects of the work. Composition, value, gesture and quality of mark are guiding factors in the drawing’s development. The recent re-introduction of colour brings with it other sensory dimensions, and I often select a particular pigment or material because it triggers a chain of associations in my mind. 

Biography

I was born in 1961 in Honolulu, Hawaii to parents of Japanese and European ancestry. I grew up in a tropical, volcanic landscape which fed my imagination. As a young person I was interested in botany, dance and writing. I attended Punahou School and University of Hawaii, and then earned a BA in fine art at University of California Santa Cruz in 1986, and an MA and MFA in drawing and painting at The University of Iowa in 1988/89.

I moved to England in 1989 to teach art at an international college in West Sussex for three years. Following that, I worked with a group of artists to set up an arts organization now known as Phoenix Brighton, where I have a studio and am employed as part of the management team, running the gallery and curating some of the exhibitions.

My studio practice began primarily in painting, working on large, layered, semi-abstract canvasses over extended stretches of time. Around ten years ago, due to illness, I had to stop painting, and returned to drawing in charcoal and pencil, which I had previously been doing alongside the paintings. The drawings have developed into complex, painterly compositions which stand alone as complete works, and incorporate colour, collage and a wide range of materials. I have recently returned to painting, and the new work reflects the discoveries I have made through an in depth exploration of drawing.

Art helps me to explore the way my mind works, and is a means of communicating with others through a metaphorical language.

Recent drawings have been exhibited at The Contemporary Museum at First Hawaiian Center in Honolulu and at Rochester Art Gallery, UK. My work can be seen at www.karinmori.co.uk, www.axisweb.org, and www.drawingcenter.org/viewingprogram