Ryan's work
investigates the significant role family photographs
play in our lives and memories. Working in a photo lab
while in college, Ryan observed that the same images
showed up in scores of rolls of film; each family seemed
drawn to documenting situations in similar ways. Ryan
began to see these photographs as templates affecting
the way we remember people, places, and even ourselves.
In their complete subjectivity, photographs exist somewhere
between the personal and the anonymous, the candid and
the contrived. Ryan uses these loaded elements to display
the fundamental nature of human emotion. The figures
in Ryan's paintings assume familiar poses and gestures,
and though carefully drawn, are not recognizable by
facial features or expressions but rather by their surrounding
environment. To heighten the tension between familiarity
and obscurity, the backgrounds of Ryan's pieces are
built up, torn away and densely layered in contrast
to the unclothed portions of the figures being rendered
primarily in charcoal. The resulting images retain an
essence of anonymity that allows the viewer to imbue
into any particular piece, his or her own memories and
sentiments and to remind us of how affected we all are
by the snapshot.
Catherine Ryan was born and raised in New Jersey. She
moved to the Bay Area in 1996 and received her Bachelor
of Fine Arts from the California College of Arts and
Crafts in May 2000. Ryan began exhibiting her work at
HANG in the summer of 2001.
