Ghosts

ongoing series, gouache on paper, dimensions variable

I find so many interesting things on my daily walks. Four leaf clovers, dentures, random playing cards, feathers, dead birds and hair extensions are all lying on the ground waiting to be claimed. They often end up in my studio where they are sorted into collections which I call the Larassa Kabel Museum of Everyday Wonders.

Sticks became a particular obsession of mine. For a while it seemed like I was finding a really great stick every morning. They are such beautiful forms of natural design, and it is easy to compare them to calligraphic lines or kintsugi, the veins of gold used to mend cracks in Japanese tea cups. Some branches look like entire miniature trees while others have been damaged to the point of abstraction. They illustrate the different patterns of growth and geometry between species of trees as well as between individual trees of the same species, and there is a beautiful tension between perfection an imperfection. The branches are also markers of time. Many come from trees I have walked past almost every day for 20 years. I’ve watched young trees mature and mature trees fail.

Over the years, these amazing sticks piled up in the studio to the point that they were taking up too much space and were (maybe) a fire hazard. Something had to be done with them. I spent months looking at my branches before deciding that what I wanted to capture were their portraits as individuals. Using silhouette portraiture as my foundation, I created almost two hundred black gouache paintings, the velvety blackness of the paint reading as both object and void. Individually, they are essays in Natural forms. En mass, they become a catalog of how I spend my life: my daily walks, my love of Nature, and the deep connection I feel to the place I call home.