Kitty McChesney + Art

Colorado 1990
The Denver Art Museum

“When the landscape is metaphorical, it might be anywhere. The cursive sedgelike gestures of Kitty McChesney’s monumental drawings project the essentials of plant forms.”

— Jane Fudge, Visual Art Critic, Denver, Colorado (Catalogue essay, Colorado 1990, The Denver Art Museum)

Colorado, State of the Art
Aspen Art Museum, Arvada Center for the Arts and Humanities, Colorado Springs Fine Arts Center

“There is no perspective in Kitty McChesney’s quirky doodlings. The lines, angles, marks and smudgings fall across the sheet as if in a landscape with no discernible features, but with a distinct feeling of location and place. A sense of complete subjectivity renders these drawings inaccessible as objects of ordinary inquiry which might seek to freeze or objectify their meanderings. The austere immediacy of graphite coupled with the responsiveness of paper beautifully accommodates the artist’s mark and touch. The drawings appear chanced upon, far from the enterprise of 'art' and 'exhibitions.'" 

— Simon Zalkind, Independent Art Advisor, Denver, Colorado (Catalogue essay, Colorado State of the Art: Aspen Art Museum, Colorado Springs Fine Arts Center, Arvada Center for the Arts and Humanities)

Meanwhile, Back at the Ranch
The University of Colorado Boulder

"Perhaps the most problematic interaction between mediums exists between writing and images. Certain pictographic languages such as ancient Chinese or Egyptian have intertwined the two, but our relationship with those languages is for the most part after the fact. They no longer have their original force. Kitty McChesney, however, in a brilliant and aptly titled 'inscription' gives us—by implying rather than providing specific reference—a sense of the force of the meaning that inspires both verbal and visual 'languages.'"

—Mark Shannon, Art Critic, Boulder,Colorado (exhibition review, Meanwhile, Back at the Ranch)