Katelynn Partanen
My process utilises methods such as free association, surrealist techniques and other generative frameworks to stimulate ideas and allow the unconscious to enter my work. The results span across from autobiographical or psychoanalytic reflections of my mental state to silly and strange absurdities as a means of escapism.
Working with a multidisciplinary approach, I enjoy experimenting with the tactile nuances of different mediums and discovering new ways of presenting ideas – be it with traditional or digital technologies. I seek to invoke curiosity in the the viewer with poetic musings on the human condition and observations of daily life. The uncanny and absurd present themselves in my work through a blending of contrasting notions such as humour and the unsettling; the serious and the playful; the homely and the otherworldly.
My practice engages with research into the Freudian notion of the ‘uncanny’. On the nature of this, Freud wrote:
“heimlich is a word the meaning of which develops towards an ambivalence, until it finally coincides with its opposite, unheimlich. Unheimlich is in some way or other a sub-species of heimlich."
Freud, S 1955, 'The Uncanny', in Strachet, J (ed.), The Standard Edition of the Complete Psychological Works of Sigmund Freud Vol. XVII An Infantile Neurosis and Other Works (1917–1919), Hogarth Press, London, p. 226.
Birds Nest, 2020
Collage with National Geographic clippings
Untitled, 2020
Doodle in paint over photograph
Untitled (Self Portrait), 2020
Oil on canvas and paint