MIDNIGHT BLUE
CAT TESLA

OPENING FOR ARTWALK

Thursday, August 7 from 5:00-8:00

“Midnight Blue is more than a color. For me it’s a memory. It’s the hue I reached for most as a child, drawn to its quiet depth and mystery. Somewhere between indigo and black, midnight blue is the color of the night sky just before sleep, it’s the pause between one breath and the next. Midnight blue is the cool shadow on a warm day.

In this series, I’ve returned to that crayon in spirit, letting the richness of this color guide the work. My work explores contrasts – contrasts between light against shadow, smooth textures against rough, the curved and the angular, strength versus delicacy. My process combines the things I have loved since childhood: drawing and painting. I alternate layers of drawing and painting in my work, beginning with automatic drawing (from the body, the subconscious) using graphite or wax crayon, then adding acrylic, oil stick, hand-painted collage, spray paint, and oil paint depending on the piece. “Midnight Blue” speaks to the spaces between light and dark, certainty and ambiguity—where abstraction thrives, and imagination is free to roam.”

International artist Cat Tesla is a contemporary nature-based abstract painter. She worked as a genetic counselor on faculty at Emory University for 20 years, then eventually traded genetics clinic for art studio. Cat’s work has been exhibited in galleries across the U.S. and U.K., as well as the Knoxville Museum of Art, Museum of Contemporary Art in Atlanta, and the Marietta/Cobb Museum of Art north of Atlanta. After 27 years as a professional artist, Tesla’s paintings are in more than 300 corporate collections and nearly 1000 hospitals and medical centers in the U.S., and in thousands of private collections worldwide. Tesla lives and works in the Sarasota, FL area.