Catalina McIsaac

Artist

When I go to these isolated beaches to collect my art making materials there are, rarely, more than a handful of beachgoers. My goal is to bring the experience of the beach to the city. It’s important that people remember how special a rugged coastline is, and how it touches the deepest parts of our soul and heals.

The ocean is a sanctuary; a place for the spiritual, poetic and artistic, in each individual, to expand. The visitor that experiences this exhibit soaks up the atmosphere and carries it into the world. The exhibit reveals the ocean as a generous landscape that gives us the intangible things we crave; peace, happiness and oneness. The exhibit contributes to a heightened sense of urgency to protect our wild places.

The Art of Ocean, Part 2

The river continues to flow through to the ocean. At the ocean’s edge rip tides surge and twist as the river kisses the lips of rough ocean waves.

The sand is packed from the raining sky, overcast discourages everything.

A driftwood tree pokes out through the packed sand. The sea wraps around the branches, burying her wave by wave.

At the exit a bright white Egret tiptoes across the shadowy wetland.

You should have been there.

The Art of Ocean

Storm

The sky opens between dark clouds and the sea cuts deep rivers into the wetlands.

A complete reversal from the day prior when ducks floated on wide bands of quiet ponds stretched over reddish brown sea grasses that ruffle in the wind.

The sea is an unpredictable companion for the sand that rolls around under the ocean’s bullying or caresses; depending on the weather.

I am always full of excitement to witness primal art exhibitions at Ocean Park Beach.

I love to bend down and collect the treasures the sea throws onto the sand. Last week I filled my shawl with small conches rolled up to rest on the hard sand at low tide.

The constant wind etches into the sand and creates ribbons of wavelike patterns.

The roar of the sea muffles the sound of seagulls. The pelicans are stoic and the snowy plovers comical.

I hurry to snap one more picture before the rain starts.

~ Catalina

Art in LA

I’m at the Museum of Contemporary Art for an ArtTable exhibition event. Kerry James Marshall paints his black history and MOCA shares it in “Mastery”.

Kerry James Marshall creates a roller coaster of work that brings me up short. He shows me growing up black, being black, and experiencing black life, in America, is a wrenching experience. Just when you feel tears well up at the insensitivity of society, he shows you love and joy so deep you realize art liberates everyone.

I leave the retrospective of this master painter with great appreciation for art museums and the role they play in social justice, civil society and happiness. Social Justice because I see with new eyes the inequities that create divisions. Civil society because I leave committed to do my part in expressing the human story and happiness, because I am a better person for witnessing the beauty and courage displayed on the walls of the Museum of Contemporary Art, in Los Angeles.

~ Catalina

Artists see and share the invisible.