Kathy Boulding’s paintings become memory material. The artist combines plaster and industrial paint with oils, acrylics and glitter to construct densely layered surfaces, which are then scratched and reworked, mining embedded images drawn from memorabilia, photographs and art history. Boulding’s landscapes and interiors, while process-based, are personal, particularly influenced by his childhood on the Colorado plains, his long practice of graffiti on abandoned buildings and trains, and the commercial faux finishing techniques he learned from his uncle. for blood flowBouldin created a series of works that he describes as “mirages or scenes captured from the perspective of someone rafting down the Colorado River,” from the Rocky Mountains to the Mexico-California border. The traveler encounters the West in what Boulding calls a “post-historical haze” that blends archetypes with everyday life.
The dance between accumulation and reduction shapes many of the environments the artist depicts, and is also reflected in his approach. The canyon was carved into the earth by erosion over thousands of years and is now rendered Shell Gplum (2025-26) Cut through layers of cement and stucco, their cliffs are densely covered with marble formations. In the foreground, a robed figure, his face almost scuffed by Bouldin’s wear, seems as lost as the ancient medieval icon his form suggests. under similar geological conditions Cloud seeding machine (2026), a sewn horizontal seam in the canvas separates the surface from the pool below, an effect similar to looking at water through glass. The artist engineered the naturally slow chemical reaction between water and metal that rusted through the gaps and underwater vegetation due to Boulding’s oxidation of the faux finish paint. This harmony between image and expressive act makes these works appear destined, as if they had existed in the world long before Boulding discovered them.
water also flows through Red River Mirage (2026), bisecting the canvas horizontally. A version of Manet young flutist (1866) stands sentinel, his flute perfectly aligned across the river. The translucent, stooped figures in the foreground are as flat as the appropriations, their horizontal shapes contrasting with the ridges of paint that animate the surface of the tributaries. Its dreamy, non-native colors, including the titular river and pink channel, seem to both seep into and pile onto the grass; a combination of source images; and a variety of textures, Red River Mirage Presenting the landscape as a product of painterly imagination. The water’s unnatural, bloody hue also hints at an ecological crisis. Music played by a flute player in military uniform heralds the dangerous advance. Based on an artist’s video of a man using a metal detector, the ten-foot-wide goldfish (2026) represents movement through a series of continuous stills, much like Eadweard Muybridge, known for his illustrations of galloping horses composed of a series of photographs at the end of the 19th century. Composed of rust tones and ethereal blues, this beach bum is reflected in the ocean above him and appears to emerge from the landscape. His search for treasures buried beneath the sand echoes the artist’s practice of unearthing artifacts from ruins.
