Michael Kathriner:

I am a high school art teacher in Roxana High School. I make art when I can and have gotten over myself as being a serious, practicing artist. I do art because I love it. But more importantly to me, I teach art. It’s debatable whether I do either of them well, but it hasn’t stopped me from trying.

My older pieces (2016-2018) are what I call “color clutter.” The paintings are more about color, pattern, and design- not content. Just this spring, I slowly developed my style into the circle paintings that you see. Again, I cannot exclaim they mean something deeper than just art elements and principles, but I enjoy making them regardless of content or not. My challenge is to combine colors, lines, and textures to create something exciting and appealing to look at. I also like to play with the scale of the pieces to see if I can translate small paintings into larger ones and vice versa. And although I have been making the circle paintings for a few months, I feel that they will continue to evolve and lead to something else, maybe even something better?