Behold Revelation: The Fairy Tale Paintings of Katherine Ace

Katherine Ace’s recent work focuses on images from the fairy tales of the Brother’s Grimm. The kingdom of these stories is the psyche, and there the challenges of one’s inner life are dramatically explored. Many of the tales concern a life passage where one part of the psyche is not values, or where a crisis awaits resolution, personified by the protagonist and his or her journey.

The artist is captivated by how the Grimm’s stories embody the complex issues that we all experience intimately: the dualities of life and death, humor and tragedy, beauty and corruption. In the fairy tales she is drawn to dark feeling, the process of transformation and the fire beneath the outward reserve that we usually present to the world.

In these works, still lifes serve as metaphorical settings in which to examine the questions of desire, mortality, and our place in the cosmos. A number of these paintings bring together both autobiographical and art historical images and a range of objects, textiles and papers. ​

Exhibition overview from museum website