Catherine Eaton Skinner: 108

Best known for her encaustic paintings incorporating natural imagery, CATHERINE SKINNER’s Gya Gye (Tibetan for 108) and related series represent dramatic experimentation in form, process, and viewer engagement. 

Informed by extensive travels in Bhutan, India, Japan, and elsewhere—along with her corresponding research into languages and philosophical systems—she expanded her mediums to include rope, fabric, glass, stones, and found objects which she modified in unpredictable ways. Although some of the series, such as the Elements paintings, retain recognizable imagery, her recent series bring 108 into the twenty-first century.

From QR code patterns to the simple, interminable zeroes and ones of binary language, Skinner discerns pictorial aptitude in contemporary digital codes. Other series explore ancient tally marks—both eastern and western—and the abstracting impact of systematically repeating simplified mountains or tight details of eyes, among other universal motifs.