FOCUSING ON THE CORE

Opening: Opening Second Friday, Jan 8, 5-8pm

Closing: Jan 28, 5-8pm

Gallery hours after opening: Thursdays 5-8pm, Saturdays 1-5pm

C.A.T. is a located at 314 S Kenosha, Tulsa, OK 74120

Abstraction is “the process of removing or hiding specific, complex details to focus on core, general ideas or functions. It turns concrete examples into broad concepts, making information easier to understand and use.” This exhibit will feature the work of 3 local abstract painters: DENVER RISLEY, DEAN WYATT, & ABBY HERD.

Denver Risley, born 1971, grew up in East Tulsa along the banks of Mingo Creek. After six years at sea in the US Navy he returned to Tulsa, became a stagehand, and worked live theater, continually, for almost twenty years, being a hapless traveller throughout that time. He received an audio engineering diploma from the Church Studio, Leon Russell's former studio, and rediscovered painting after some classes in post-war abstract expressionism. Denver currently resides in Catoosa, Oklahoma.

Dean Wyatt’s creative focus is on non-objective abstract imagery. 

Dean approaches his art from a non-verbal space, adopting a process-driven approach to painting. Asked about his art, he explains, “my work is primarily centered around themes of transition, whether physical or over time.  

Visually, he draws much of his inspiration from the stark landscapes of his youth in southwestern Oklahoma and his travels to New Mexico and Arizona.                                                                                                              

His work has been exhibited in galleries in Oklahoma, Texas, Colorado, and New Mexico, and featured in solo exhibitions at the Oklahoma State Capitol and the Tulsa Performing Arts Center.

He is active in the Oklahoma arts community, currently serving on the boards of the Tulsa Artists’ Coalition (TAC), the Tulsa Arts District Business Association, and the Southeastern Indian Artists Association (SEIAA).  He previously served on the boards of the Oklahoma Visual Arts Coalition (OVAC), and the Tulsa Ballet.

Abby Herd was born on the west side of the river inside a closed religious community, where art and music became an early means of escape. At twelve, they were moved to Tulsa. Six years later, they picked up a paintbrush for the first time.

For years, Abby lived beneath the threat of losing the only community they had known. At twenty-seven, after coming out as queer, they made the decision to sever their connection to the religion entirely. In the years that followed, they began working with individuals struggling with mental illness and substance abuse disorders after combatting their own for years. All the while, continuing to develop their own artistic practice in private.

What began as a means of escape gradually became a means of reclamation.

After first sharing a sample of their work at a queer art market, Abby went on to exhibit a larger body of work at the Beehive exhibit inside Contemporary Arts of Tulsa. Their work explores the tension between light and shadow, identity and dissolution, pain and transformation. Through layered forms, colorful tension, and psychological imagery, they examine the duality of the human experience, the reclamation of identity and the reemergence of self after the structures that once defined it have fallen away. They explore what it means to emerge from that absence as something entirely your own: a being capable of holding both light and the dark.