The softness of a cardinals feather; the arc of a quails head; the
stoic glance of a lifeless bird; the position of a wilted petal; the
explosive color of a flower after it blooms. Extinction never looked
more beautiful than through the eyes of Kate Breakey, whose large
scale painted photographs of decaying flowers and lifeless birds pay
homage to death and the remaining spirits that persist.
Kate Breakey first conceived of this project in 1995 as a visiting
lecturer at the University of Texas, when she tried to rescue a sparrow
from the claws of a cat. As she said in a 1999 interview, "I
realized I couldn't help the circumstances of its death, but I could
memorialize it in a photograph." This realization gave birth
to a project which has spanned more than nine years and can be seen
in two books, Small Deaths (1997) and Flowers/Birds,
her recent 2003 monograph.
Like the early practitioners of nature morte or mementos
mori paintings and photographs, Breakey embraces death as part
of life, understanding their parallels. She is careful to present
these small deaths as they appeared in reality, photographing her
subjects and then painstakingly painting each feather and stamen its
true natural color. Enlarging them to 32 x 32", Breakey paints
back the colors death has absorbed, using oil paint and colored pencils.
These larger-than-life portraits act as memorials to the small creatures
found within the desert of Tucson (where she now lives) and in packages
sent from friends all over the country. The resulting images are both
startlingly beautiful and arresting, as small creatures and objects
gain a heroic status. Through Breakey's art, we confront our own mortality
and the fears or solace it elicits.
As she stated in the afterword in Small Deaths: "I began
to pick things up to keep and examine; I collected rocks, shells,
feathers, birds' nests, nuts and pods, and with great reverence labeled,
ordered, and displayed them in my little glass case. Visits with my
father to the natural history museum in Adelaide filled me with awe
and envy and the knowledge that the world was brimming with fantastic,
mysterious, beautiful things. But there was another lesson to be learned
about nature - a more difficult one: nature is as cruel and brutal
as it is magnificent. For every miraculous and marvelous event there
is also suffering, slaughter and death."
Kate Breakey was born in Adelaide, South Australia and moved to the
United States in 1988. Her work is part of numerous private and public
collections including the Museum of Fine Arts (Houston, TX), Museum
of Photographic Arts (San Diego, CA) and Austin Museum of Art (Austin,
TX). This is her first solo show in Chicago.
