Ines Kramer

Artist Statement:

I’ve always been more of a passenger than a driver. I’ve collected views from side windows and rear windows, more interested in the peripheries than the main event. These edges of perception are compelling in a different way: softer, but more persistent.

It’s the same when I collect images for my collage based paintings. I’m far more interested in the fuzzy backgrounds than the foreground. When I take my own pictures, I’m drawn to what’s been abandoned, to what is most often overlooked, or cropped out later at home computers: ordinary buildings, traffic signs, tree limbs, bits of ceiling and floor, a pile of books in the corner.

This is my jumping off place: I collect these peripheral views and then begin to play the way the memory does. I arrange like and disparate elements in a way that makes idiosyncratic sense, creating a new landscape from bits of the old, infused with feelings attached to that time and this present. Paint subdues some elements and intensifies others, much like the process of forgetting, remembering, editing the past.

I studied painting in New York City (at Parson’s and the Art Students League) and San Francisco State University. In 1992 I began exhibiting my work, gaining national exposure by 1993. 

Currently, I am represented by galleries and art consultants throughout the country, with numerous solo exhibits at Winterowd Fine Art in Santa Fe, Ariodante in New Orleans and Hang Art in San Francisco. My work is included in numerous public and private collections. Most recently, I was featured in Nancy Reyner’s latest book, Acrylic Innovation.