Karl Ljungquist : Kathy

Karl Ljungquist is an artist whose central concern is the relationship of photographic source material to lived or imagined emotional experience, filtered through the unstable processes of memory and perception. Focusing on the materiality of the painted surface and using a limited, unifying color palette, he links a range of imagery into a coherent yet imperfectly remembered, uneasy psychological space.

Ljungquist's paintings are generally small or medium scaled, meant to exist as objects of intimate contemplation, portals into worlds that exist only in memory. All his paintings are born from photographic source material, generally taken from old family photos, found images, or photographs the artist takes himself that have personal relevance. The process of rendering the de-contextualized photographic image into a painting becomes a means of processing his relationship to the people and places depicted, and also an attempt to find the universal in the particular. The photographs are translated onto canvas through a free-hand drawing process and then articulated through layers of paint application. A mix of landscapes and interiors, and most recently portraits, he uses his subjects to work through themes of loss, memory, the passing of time, mortality, and the fundamentally unknowable nature of other people, even those closest to us.

Kathy is comprised of a group of paintings focused on the artist's mother, who is struggling with Alzheimer's disease.  Family photos found while cleaning out her suburban home form the core of the imagery. The series has expanded to include other images that the artist uses to process the ongoing loss involved in his mother’s disease, and to serve as a testament to her life filtered through his own flawed and complicated understanding of her.