Cat Gunn
Issue No. 22 • Spring 2021
A wise woman once said nobody cares and you won't shut up
Every moment we spend together has felt more like home than anywhere I've ever been
I feel safer when you speak for me it's nice to have you on my side
Artist Statement
My work highlights moments of my life that are romantic, sentimental, nostalgic, and tragic. Through abstraction I create an underlying narrative of growing up queer and transgender, forming relationships, falling in and out of love, and examining the world around me. Many of my paintings derive from the experience of navigating space in a world where the gender binary is ingrained into many aspects. A moment as mundane as filling my car up with gas can be filled with strangers referring to me as “sir” and then correcting themselves to say “ma’am” and vice versa (but they never assume I am non-binary or use gender neutral terms). Growing up, I would often have to assume the gender strangers bestowed upon me as a means of relieving the tension in those situations. The hostility people emanate when they cannot readily identify someone as a man or a woman is unfortunately a familiar feeling to me. This hostility has also permeated platonic and romantic relationships when someone expects me to portray myself through a heteronormative scope. I meditate on these interactions while I work in the studio. These paintings revolve around the notion of creating space from a queer perspective with a playful awkwardness. These self-contained worlds are made up of repeating stripes, gradated forms, twisted squiggles, and organic shapes. Skewed geometry with hard edges flirt with expressive grounds and fields of color, creating an ambiguous space that is dizzying, strange, and dynamic. The quirky geometry and irregularity of patterns allow for vulnerable and imperfect moments, and are equally about sameness as they are about difference. The work, both as physical objects and as windows into an illusionistic world, suggests a transfer between states— erratic and ever-evolving.
Artist Bio
Originally from Baltimore, Cat Gunn is an artist living and working in San Diego who identifies as non-binary transgender and queer. They create abstract paintings with layers of oil paints and mediums built up over time, using a variety of techniques to manipulate the alchemy of the paint. Gunn has recently exhibited work at Maryland Art Place and Terrault Contemporary in Baltimore, MD, 40 West Arts Gallery in Lakewood, CO, Da Vinci Art Alliance in Philadelphia, PA, and Cade Art Gallery in Arnold, MD among others.
Gunn received a BFA in Painting and an MA in Professional Studies (Art History Concentration) from Towson University. They are currently pursuing their MFA at University of California San Diego.