Kate Breakey

Photography is a necessary, inevitable component of her project. Certainly these images would reverberate much differently if they did not give us clues to their photographic basis. By the same token, they would echo in quite different fashion if they prioritized impartial observation over poetic engagement and interpretation. Of the media she blends in her work, Breakey says, "I begin with a photograph — a highly convincing illusion, a map of reality, a piece of evidence rendered in silver-grey tones. This I smear and coat with oil paint in many transparent layers — the layers of emotional subjectivity — lies, dreams, delusions, exaggerations and embellishments. If I am lucky the media combine, become enmeshed and inseparable, a curious marriage of what might be real and what is imagined or desired. They now collude to play with my perceptions about what truth is, my favourite game. I am a sensualist. I admit to my seduction by texture, colour, light and form. It is my deepest pleasure, my lovely addiction.

Golden Stardust Statement

The Element 'Gold, (Au) can only be made in the nuclear reactor of stars. It came to our planet when the Earth was first forming, as dust from catastrophic astronomical events —stars imploding and ejecting energy, as light and matter. The events that produce most of the gold in the universe are called 'Gamma Ray Bursts'. This occurs when a double star consisting of two neutron stars collapses under the force of gravity. Neutron stars are the cores of dead stars. They are only a few miles in diameter; so dense that every last bit of matter has been compressed down to the density of the atomic nucleus. The two dead, dark stars spin around each other for millions of years at millions of miles per hour, constantly pulling each other closer. Then finally they touch. At that moment more energy is released than the rest of the universe combined. Much of their mass collapses into a black hole and leaves our universe forever, but the rest is released in an enormous explosion of gamma rays and newly-formed elements. Some of that star-dust flung into space is gold. The gold in the Earth's crust was carried here on asteroids that hit the earth, during the 'Late Heavy Bombardment' 3.8 billion years ago when the Earth gained most of its mass. The Ancient Egyptians believed that gold was the flesh of their Sun god 'Ra'. I was struck by the beauty and brightness, the depth of Orotones, which were first made in the early 20th century by, among others, Pillsbury and Edward Curtis. My work is a contemporary version of an Orotone. The image a digitally printed on UV Art glass with 24kt gold leaf applied to the back.

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.

All images are available as 32 x 32" gelatin silver prints, hand-colored with oils and pencil in an edition of 10. Pieces range in price from $5000 to $9000, depending on where they are in the edition.

Golden Stardust images are Orotones (prints on glass with gold leaf) framed by the artist made in an edition of 20. Image sizes vary. Pieces range in price from $900 to $2500, depending on size.

Please call: (312) 266-2350 for prices of specific pieces.
Prices are print only unless otherwise indicated.