KATHLEEN YEMM: STATEMENT OF ARTISTIC INSPIRATION AND ASPIRATION Inner city born and bred, I am without formal training, but my elementary school teachers encouraged my creativity by sending me home at the end of each term with a pile of paper and drawing materials that brightened my summer. In my twenties, I regularly placed first in amateur shows: Chatham, Fishawack Festival, Garden State Cultural Council, Irvington Art Association, Ocean County Artists Guild, Verona Arts Council, West Essex Art Association, West Hudson Community Arts Festival, etc. Now, some forty years later, I am beginning where I left off. In contrast to the concrete, asphalt, and blacktop out of which I grew, I am these days finding myself drawn to nature as my subject matter, even as my background remains in spirit. Those neighborhoods of my youth were impoverished but rich in color and texture, and plants so well portray mysteries of wilderness and cultivation. My outsider art aspires to access a diversity of blossoming consciousness. As my life, like most, has rarely been in balance, so is my work asymmetrical, gently seeking fresh perspectives. And shapes?—sometimes I want to reduce an image to geometry (Water Lily unveils some of this inclination), and sometimes I want to evoke energy and motion in shapes (see Day Lily), while other pictures here express both elements coexisting on the canvas. As for colors, most of mine are rich, but delicacy also entices me. My flowers’ hues evoke memories and sensations, personal and cultural. When I paint for friends, I ask which colors they like, which always surprises them, as they expect the artist to tell them what is esthetically correct, while I prefer that they instantly feel pleasure at what they see on their walls, even as I hold to my visions. Viewers’ experiences fascinate me. Many people sense the portrayed plant as such and also as a kind of landscape to traverse or even to enter, to fall into as if magnetized (as they describe Purple Plant). Some have described a flower (like Pansy) as looking so delicious that they want very thoroughly to savor it. Each sighting is different, with many messages, possibly contradicting, possibly reinforcing each other. Viewers’ imaginations make my audiences my co-creators.