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kate finn's stream of art consciousness

About me

If Bukowski ate her brain

Kate is a brilliant artist who initially spent years studying dance and hanging about in theatres and art centres.  Thankfully, a friend who kept asking why she didn’t concentrate more on the pictures she created, gave her a kick up the backside, handed her a camera and said ‘I can’t believe I’m saying this, but you need to be an artist.’  Kate stopped dithering, stopped doubting, and began seriously creating.

With a raw, unapologetic gift of understanding form, line, and colour, Kate makes dramatic large scale photo collages out of small environments that she builds in 3D.

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@Katefinnart says get your learn on about the incomparable @Jerry Saltz

Kate's collections

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A PASSION FOR PENITENCE
Being a non writer with something to say
if Bukowski ate my brain

Kate's Artwork

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    TRAPPED 2018

    This piece is like the final act of a play where the word marriage has become a biased tidy single polaroid picture. One that is safely tinted to resemble an old photo, echoing my desire to control how I want to remember this period of my life. It personifies a life I can’t believe I ever lived.

    Trapped 2018 Kate Finn collage

    TRAPPED 2018

    I believe there is some truth when people say that you only remember the good moments in life because my brain harbours a large cow pat used to fill a certain hole left over from my past.
    I have no solid visual memories of the time I spent as a married woman. I know this is some sort of conscious choice, but I can’t even remember what my ex husband looked like. However, when I attempt to really focus on my memories of our life together, all I experience is a dull physical feeling of being trapped under a heavy blanket. The only moments I can recall as a couple, are those where he did something that was stupid, and I laughed at him. In short, If I played a chronological film in my head of these years, he’s not in it.

    This piece is like the final act of a play where the word marriage has become a biased tidy single polaroid picture. One that is safely tinted to resemble an old photo, echoing my desire to control how I want to remember this period of my life. It personifies a life I can’t believe I ever lived.

    By making this experience of marriage into a piece of art, I have removed the cow pat, given my forgotten years substance and put any emotional residue that escaped my convenient amnesia, a structure. Although, I have to admit that it made me laugh out loud, when my brain metamorphosed something as complex and messy as a bad relationship, into a gold paper cup, some glitter, a rock and some plastic swords.

    I would be married, but I’d have no wife. I would be married to a single life.
    -Charles Bukowski.

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      Chef 2019

      "Fuck the food, I thought, this was a game and it didn’t involve chicken thighs! And, according to this geezer, if you rub garlic on the inside of an oven dish before you put the pasta bake in, well it becomes more than a potted spagbol with toasted cheese on top …it becomes MANFOOD. "

      Kate-Finn-Artwork Chef 2019 collage

      Chef 2019

      Made in a small Pyrex kitchen bowl, rather like a summer fruits pudding and without glue, this work is based on an evening I spent watching a cooking programme on the telly with my friend Sue)

      Sue and I were watching a cookery programme, which was a very satisfactory pastime when you had a tea towel and a spectacular home made curry sat on your lap. A famous male chef (or peacock) and a female cookery writer (or nice to look at skivvie) had taken on the task of teaching us thicko‘s (the viewers) how to make a pasta bake.

      Fuck the food, I thought, this was a game and it didn’t involve chicken thighs! And, according to this geezer, if you rub garlic on the inside of an oven dish before you put the pasta bake in, well it becomes more than a potted spagbol with toasted cheese on top …it becomes MANFOOD. I don’t know many people that would have time for carrying out the sort of crap, that you wouldn’t be able to taste once it was cooked.

      I was eating a spectacular piece of curried chicken, that was spectacular but not MANFOOD. Sue would have thrown me out of her house if I had decided to treat the chicken to a half hour sports massage before it was cooked. Suddenly, Sue said,‘I wonder what they are both thinking?…I mean it’s just a fucking pasta bake.’ I chuckled while deciding whether to run my finger round my plate or to use some garlic nan to finish off a particularly fork resistant potion of tadka dal. I chose the nan and answered with my mouth full saying, Well, if you want my opinion, she‘s thinking Do I look good in this skirt?. Sue laughed and her plate wobbled. Then she piped up..…’Yeah! And he’s thinking…Never mind the skirt love, when are you going to put those cherry red lips around me nob!.

      ‘A man can go seventy years without a piece ass, but he can die in a week without a bowel movement’.

      -Charles Bukowski.

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        Damn, They Missed

        I was in heaven. Hog heaven...with cheese on top. He was away for 5 weeks in South America snowboarding, which meant that technically, I was on holiday from him.

        Damn, they missed kate finn art

        Damn, They Missed

        I was in heaven. Hog heaven…with cheese on top. He was away for 5 weeks in South America snowboarding, which meant that technically, I was on holiday from him.

        It was a few days into my respite when I began to appreciate what feeling good felt like; I wasn’t tired all the time, being talked at, reminded of my many faults or told how amazing and clever he was. I felt relaxed and at peace for the first time in over a decade. The fact that I felt so much better without him suggested that I was tethered to someone that I couldn’t actually stand.
        Two and a half weeks had passed when my peaceful holiday at home was interrupted by a 3am phone call -from him. There had been an armed robbery at the hostel where he was staying and although he had escaped injury he was understandably shaken up by the whole course of events.
        I listened to the story, made soothing reassuring responses and empathised as I was expected too, while the whole time the sentence, DAMN they missed! was like a litany on loop, playing inside my head. I then spent the next twenty minutes trying to convince him that he should stay and carry on with his vacation…without success…bitch.


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        Love Bomb (2018)

        This work was created during a very long conversation on speakerphone, with my friend Tracey. We were discussing the ins and outs of, How to spot the narcissist in your life?

        love bomb kate finn art

        Love Bomb (2018)

        This work was created during a very long conversation on speakerphone, with my friend Tracey. We were discussing the ins and outs of, How to spot the narcissist in your life?

        Tracey is one of the most intelligent women I know. She really gets life and has fought against the constraints of family, culture and social expectations in order to thrive. For Tracey, unpicking the past has meant systematically expelling all the narcissists from her life. Family or friend no one has escaped this cull. It’s purpose was to enable her to leave behind, ‘a negative culture of mental health fuckery’ that has held her back.
        Love bombing is an expression that is used to describe behaviour where someone attempts to influence another person or a group of people with an excessive amount of attention and affection. It is a commonly used method of grooming by cults, gangs and pimps to gain trust and control their victims. Narcissists also use it to gain control of their interpersonal relationships with partners, family and friends and once trust is assured, this control will turn abusive and debasing in nature.
        I have no memory of the mechanics of making this work, but when I ended the call I definitely remember staring at the piece before I photographed it, in a state of mild confusion with the scissors still in my hand and a lot of glue on my trackie-bot-bots.

        Of course it’s possible to love a human being if you don’t know them too well.

        -Charles Bukowski

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          Tank (2019)

          Tank appeals to all the Artists that I know because according to them this work balances all the elements that you find in art, i.e. line, colour, shape, space, value, form and texture. What intrigues me is if the consensus about Tank is true, then how was something so balanced created in all that domestic chaos.

          Tank - Kate Finn Art 2019

          Tank (2019)

          My 6ft by 4ft art space had gotten a little out of hand and insidiously spread into the bedroom side of my room. This in turn was drowning in clothes to iron, fold and put away, paperwork and coffee cups. I needed to tidy up, but at that moment I really couldn’t be bothered. So I let my creative mood take over and made this piece on my bedside table, while sitting in bed listening to ‘a book at bedtime’, on radio 4.

          Tank appeals to all the Artists that I know because according to them this work balances all the elements that you find in art, i.e. line, colour, shape, space, value, form and texture. What intrigues me is if the consensus about Tank is true, then how was something so balanced created in all that domestic chaos.

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            Muse (2019)

            I really love this piece. I think it’s good. But my muse hates it because she’s in it. Should I apologise? Nah...I’m too old and selfish to care what anyone else thinks. I mean who has time for that! And anyway it’s too late to change it now cos the glue is already dry.

            Muse by kate finn art

            Muse (2019)

            I really love this piece. I think it’s good. But my muse hates it because she’s in it.
            Should I apologise? Nah…I’m too old and selfish to care what anyone else thinks. I mean who has time for that! And anyway it’s too late to change it now cos the glue is already dry.

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              A Foolish Consistency is the Hobgoblin of Little Minds (2019)

              I remember staring at her, my critic, trying to feel shame, anger or maybe guilt but none came. Instead, I felt my fool smile to itself. It had no regrets because it was a creature of no apology. So I mentally digested her words and shrugged, grateful that my fool was the reason why I was an artist and why over the years I had developed a very thick skin.

              hobgoblins of little minds kate finn art

              A Foolish Consistency is the Hobgoblin of Little Minds (2019)

              She likened me to a fool, not once but twice. And maybe I was. I had more debt than I had money, I shut up more than I spoke out and I was easily distracted and lazy by nature.

              I remember staring at her, my critic, trying to feel shame, anger or maybe guilt but none came. Instead, I felt my fool smile to itself. It had no regrets because it was a creature of no apology. So I mentally digested her words and shrugged, grateful that my fool was the reason why I was an artist and why over the years I had developed a very thick skin.

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                Nativity Circus (2015)

                I’m amazed that I had the balls to print this piece so large even though that in itself was immensely satisfying. The truth about this work is that going big felt good.

                nativity circus kate finn art

                Nativity Circus (2015)

                Who would think it was normal to put a pile of American sweets, a Japanese ceramic cat, a tin foil covered box and an orange habitat pebble lamp together, let alone to represent the Nativity? Well I did!…at 9:30pm, mid winter and after consuming half a bottle of burgundy.

                This was the first work that I ever made and the creative vision in my head was nothing like the end result. Yes, I was a little drunk but all that an excess of alcohol did was to throw into sharp focus, my slap-dash, half-arsed approach to life. It showcases a personality that has loads of imagination but avoids doing the bits that they find boring, or time consuming (i.e. detail). Not surprisingly my pragmatic mother hates it.
                I’m amazed that I had the balls to print this piece so large even though that in itself was immensely satisfying. The truth about this work is that going big felt good.
                Some people never go crazy, What truly horrible lives they must live.-Charles Bukowski.

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                  Eyes (2019)

                  This work captures those moments, where the freedom of finding the unexpected and unusual around the next corner or through the next door is not questioned, and accepted as normal by the child.

                  Eyes by Kate Finn Art

                  Eyes (2019)

                  As a child I spent many hours exploring the nooks and crannies of theatres, art centres and sports centres. I often used the ruse of needing the toilet or water in order to lose the accompanying adult or older child.
                  This work captures those moments, where the freedom of finding the unexpected and unusual around the next corner or through the next door is not questioned, and accepted as normal by the child.
                  When I look back at these experiences as the adult me, I realise I saw many things that were not what they seemed.

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                    Monkey-47 (2019)

                    My utopia would be me, alone, with maybe some pets, on the set of Logan’s run, sat drinking my favourite gin ( monkey 47) and tonic with lots of ice and a slice of grapefruit in the glass. Cheers!

                    Monkey-47 kate finn art

                    Monkey-47 (2019)

                    I have always been able to visualise myself living on the set of the 1976 film, Logan’s Run. I’m not a fan of the films plot because everyone over the age of 30 is culled and that is a monstrous dystopian idea. However, my dislike of the storyline bypasses any genocide outrage and actually stems from knowing that I simply wouldn’t cope very well being surrounded by all those unbearably full of themselves, idealistic twenty-somethings. I was such a pain in my own ass at that age, that the thought of reliving it or watching others live it, makes me nauseous.

                    My utopia would be me, alone, with maybe some pets, on the set of Logan’s run, sat drinking my favourite gin ( monkey 47) and tonic with lots of ice and a slice of grapefruit in the glass. Cheers!

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