"Kathleen Waterloo puts her art to the fire" by Jenn Q Goddu, Chicago Tribune Special, February 2005

Kathleen Waterloo traveled more last year than ever before. She was in England, Italy and Hong Kong as well as Las Vegas, Los Angeles, Jackson Hole-and lets not forget Ft. Wayne, IN-fulfilling migratory urges that serve as a foundation for some of her encaustic paintings.

"Basically I have had little time to do sketching, thinking, anything this year other than pack a suitcase," she says. With out the time to plan her art, Waterloo's work has become more spontaneous. "I have been taking stuff in and putting stuff out as quickly as possible." This process inspired "Effusion," the title of her solo show opening this Friday at Melanee Cooper Gallery. It's a nod to the feeling of unrestrained expression Waterloo has been enjoying when she's able to get into her studio.

She wouldn't trade in any of her travel, having returned, as most travelers do, with albums filled with pictures taken during her adventures. Yet flipping through the photographs, Waterloo admits she hasn't captured the typical tourist shots. Italy is remembered by close-ups of a striped cathedral exterior or a brass panel of doorbells. Hong Kong is represented in photographs of a striped bridge span or the weathered sides of buildings that caught Waterloo's eye.

While other travelers might have been disappointed to see a construction site outside of their window, Waterloo snapped a series of pictures. "I'm looking at it going,'Wow, this is beautiful,'" she says. "I came back with a whole series of stripes."

A color or a shape appeals to Waterloo and ends up, not always in recognizable form, in her paintings. She tries to keep something from each day she works on the painting visible in the final product. There might be a shadow of a shape that inspired her-perhaps from an unfolded box for tea or a design plan for a woodwork molding-or a color that reflected a certain mood one day. "It all comes out in here," she says. "I try to find order and structure for the final piece with these little things that make me happy."

for the unfamiliar, encaustic painting involves melted beeswax combined with oil paints. Waterloo applies the wa to a wooden panel with a brush and it hardens immediately. It's when she applies the flame of a blowtorch that the painting really takes it shape. "Some artists are afraid of the fire." she says. "To me that's the purest way of dealing with it and I get the best results."

Waterloo came to painting after leaving the work force to raise her two children. When her kids were old enough, she sought a creative release and attended the School of the Art Institute for painting. But it was at Oxbow five years ago that she was first introduced to the encaustic technique she now loves.

"It was an instant marriage," she says. "The number one thing is it's just fun and I get all my frustrations out with that blowtorch."

Painting has even helped her marriage, according to Waterloo. "Initially I started [painting] as a creative outlet but then I found I really needed it as a release for anger in marriage," she says. "And we've all been happy ever since."

Artist Diane Cooper, who has a studio in the same West Side complex as Waterloo, says the painter's positive outlook comes through in her work. "Kathleen is a very cheery, up kind of a person, funny and amusing. I don't ever see her doing really dark, dark paintings," she says.

Cooper does sometimes see the albums from Waterloo's trips but that background isn't always necessary. "A lot of [Waterloo's work is] about surfaces and layers but I don't ever, when she's working on something, say 'oh that looks like that photograph.' It's more a feeling about what she's thinking," she says.

Waterloo doesn't mind if her audience doesn't recognize the English stone or Asian awning that might have inspired one of her predominantly striped paintings, saying, "Art should be done for personal reasons, and all mind is."