Hi I'm Crystalle LaCouture I'm a painter based outside boston I work with Beth Kantrowitz of BK
Projects and drive by gallery in Watertown I couldn't join the other BK artist today for
the live conversation so I've submitted this video, um, with a little tour of my studio
and to talk about the piece in the auction. I'm very honored to be in the MassArt auction again
this is a cause very dear to me as a first generation student myself I relied heavily on
outside funding grants and scholarships for my education so it's very important especially in
this covert year to support the young artists coming up and MassArt. Let's go okay let's
begin. This is my studio it's in an old barn you can see I have a barn door that opens
I work on this wall you can see these are all works in progress I can talk about them
in a minute here is my palette here's another painting that I hung because there are some of
the same shapes in the piece in the auction this is my desk and this is where I make
smaller works watercolors I'll show you some of those in a minute so firstly I wanted to
talk about the piece in the auction this piece is called Narcissus it is a painting I created while
in residence at Room 83 Spring which is in a great gallery and project space in Watertown in fact
it's right next door to drive-by gallery so you should all go visit both of them at the same time.
During the time of this painting I was thinking about
these very simple shapes and this one it is a cross or an X or a plus or even a T simultaneously
just depending on the orientation and so I was trying to create an activated composition
where I honored this sort of like a Narcissus Daffodil style, um, version of this cross-shape
and a lot of my work is about problem solving so this this painting has a lot of different
depth spaces it has the black has is sort of the deep space and then the circle chain
is sort of like a middle space and then the cross shapes sort of hover and I like to play with this,
um, sort of with the viewer's eyes that you can see different things depending on your focus you
can go very deep or it can all sort of remain on the surface and, um, I think I was also thinking
about windows and, um, hierarchies of shapes and creating something that was just really tight like
every every moment of this painting made sense and there's definitely a stained glass effect
and this is an important painting for me because I believe it there's something
that happened in this that has inspired the work that I'm doing at the moment as well, um oops,
yeah so obviously the painting is at the auction so I don't have it in the studio anymore so this
painting is Narcissus. I am a serious gardener so plants are on my mind, um, often and so this is
what I was thinking about here and in this piece I just hung this because again it's the same shape
in fact it was like a a cardboard cutout that I moved around and this piece is called Petit Bateau
and in this one it's sort of about swimming to me. I used to be a competitive swimmer and there
was something very, um, satisfying to make those sort of lap lane uh flags and again same shape
but a totally different effect. This one sort of looks like they could be life buoys or umbrellas
from above so I love playing with giving a shape that is really just a simple thing
a sort of narrative and a story. So that's those paintings and we can come over here here's
my messy messy palette you can see I have this thing with blue pink yellow that's our favorites
and these works are current paintings that I'm working on and you can see they also have
a lot of this same formal quality sort of like a like a window or a
playing card something with these these edges and i'm really enjoying making something that I feel
has, uh, like a commanding power to it and these works came about because I had been doing
this is from another project I had been doing these drawings over Covid and
I have a very ill mother and so I was trying to think of something
to break free and to do sort of in her honor and I found these shooting targets which are basically
very inexpensive from the sporting goods goods store and they would be for archery or for sport
shooting and I like the idea of taking something that was already a very strong composition
and figuring out how to activate it and change it and make it something completely different, so
hence these drawings which I made are there like a devotional practice. They each say mama somewhere
in the composition and they they have to do with maybe mandalas or um reverberating sound or some
other devotional um symbolic devices that are that basically appear in all religions some way
so i've it's been just a really fun thing to try to see all the different ways that i can change,
feminize, and create something very beautiful and soft and devotional out of something that is
frankly a disposable masculine, possibly violent, material. So yes I have many many many of these
and i love drawing because it's very quiet it takes me to my desk
and allows me to create something all in one sitting and
so I've been making many of these and they're really fun I have a lot of ideas
and they just keep going on and on and on and so this is this work.
And as a painter I have been now doing these works
I'm not sure any of these are completely resolved but they are in the works i'm very interested in
handling paint and making it appear that the hand is there that there isn't sort of a taped
like under under painting.
I like accidents to happen I like to uh figure my way out for
for the for the sake of the painting and so this is yes what I'm working on and this is my space.
Thank you for visiting, I hope that was succinct I just wanted to give you a little taste of
where I work and what I'm doing at the moment um please bid often and
get some great art at the MassArt auction this year thank you so much and talk to you soon bye.