Kathleen Rashid, Screen, 1979. Oil on canvas.
September 16, 2020
Kathleen Rashid’s painting practice is one of close observation. Rather than focusing on expansive landscapes or elaborate portraiture, Rashid’s paintings often shine a spotlight on objects, settings, or individuals that are generally overlooked. For Rashid, the empty metal bowl or the open screen window are infinitely more interesting than any imposing, dramatic subject matter. In each painting, she pays special interest to her accurate, but subtle capturing of light and its changing hue according to time and location. Furthermore, the light, glinting off of, or melting across her subjects, offers a visual complexity that proves to be continuously dynamic and exciting, often bringing an intimate warmth to the work.
In Rashid’s practice, she chooses to paint from life rather than photographs. Knowing this, it is easy to feel close to the artist, to literally see as she sees. Within her work Screen from 1979, one particularly feels this closeness, as if Rashid has pulled us back into a memory that we quite forgot we had. The painting features an opened window seen from the indoors, with foliage rustling just beyond the screen. A mason jar sits on the windowsill in which cuttings have been tenderly placed. Over it all falls a warm light which seeps through the screen into the dark night outside. Rashid perfectly captures the moment, that also tells a thousand stories of warm summer nights and cool evening breezes. Looking at Screen, it is easy to understand Rashid’s vision of praising the supposedly inconsequential, which perhaps hold the most poignant, and universal meanings.
Rashid was born in Detroit in 1956. She attended Wayne State University for her BA in English as well as BFA. Graduating in 1978, Rashid soon became known for not only her paintings of the overlooked, but for her unique representations of the city of Detroit as a whole.
Written by Samantha Hohmann