Cecily Kahn
Artist Statement:
As a native New Yorker, my paintings have always reflected the angularity of the city. I spent years making paintings of buildings, roof tops, and finally maps of the city. I began to play with the map image, layering one on top of the other thus creating new forms. Eventually, these map paintings shed their representational base and became more internal, psychological maps. I try to embrace opposing forces and create balance. I like working with the diversity that paint as a material provides: thin and thick, hard edge and ephemeral veils, and drips in all directions. Paint surfaces are explored by using various mediums to thin the paint or thicken it to impasto. Color and form are used in both organic process and consciously formal decisions, to explore ideas of plasticity and formalism.
In my recent work I concentrate on the essential issues of abstraction: color line and form. Surprise and humor are also important to me. I’ve found inspiration in work from the post-cubist period, such as the American Abstract Artists Group of the 1930’s and 40’s. They were also interested in working with the essential elements of abstraction, and doing away with anything extraneous. The viewer of my work will sense this connection and come away with a feeling of history revisited with a twist.
Artist Biography:
Cecily Kahn grew up in a family of artists, living in the studio of Wolf Kahn and Emily Mason on lower Broadway in Manhattan. She first learned about art from other artists in the height of New York school Abstract Expressionists . Everyone knew each other. After attending both public and private schools in Manhattan, she attained a BFA from Rhoda Island School of Design. She then went to Italy to study etching for two years at the Calcografia Nazionale in Rome. She married fellow artist David Kapp in 1986 and moved to their studio on Canal street where they worked for 30 years. They have two grown children and two grandchildren.
Cecily was a founder of The Painting Center in NYC, an artist run nonprofit gallery. She is also a member of the American Abstract Artists organization. Her work has been shown widely.
In 2016 Cecily and her husband moved to mid coast Maine where they continue to maintain studios and exhibit their work. Since moving to Maine, Cecily’s work has become more about texture and transition. Reference to nature and it’s rhythms have become part of the abstract process. The quiet isolation is good for concentration.
AAA:
Member Since: 1998
Previous Committees:
Exhibitions 2000-2006
