Local artist, Kay Curtis will show thirteen new paintings which she calls Re-Make at The Works downtown Brattleboro February 4 – March 3. In this collection Curtis re-visits motifs from her forty years as a prolific artist and organizes them newly as a set. She conceived the idea in the summer of 2009 and completed the last work January 2011.

Curtis remarks that through her art she is “grasping for a deeper understanding” and in this set she has titles like Becoming, Unknown and Abundance. The new paintings are large and bold. They reflect her unmistakable style of whimsical figures and bright colors. Curtis invented the gouache and India ink resist method she uses in this show twenty-one years ago and called it “window painting” because of the many layers of paint.

Over time the characters in her work evolve and transform. The juggling man on the unicycle who is in the painting called Becoming has shown up since the 1970’s when she worked with the Two Penny Circus in Plainfield Vermont. He has known many faces. He was on greeting cards created by carving linoleum and printed by a group of transplanted Vermonters living in Oakland California in 1975. These images were created using a wooden spoon and rice paper and sold in Museum gift stores all over the country. He was a rubber stamp design called Balance during the 1980’s. In 1990 he spent a short time as a dry-point monoprints with collage elements called “Inventing a language of himself.” And now he has transformed into a re-make titled “Becoming”.

Each of the characters in this show has its own story as Curtis discovers her own language of understanding. “A lifetime is a long time to spend playing and growing through artmaking. I am incredibly blessed that I have been able to love what I do and do what I love!” The artist will be at the Gallery Walk opening February 4, 5:30 – 8:30.

Framed paintings are $800 each including tax.