And The Stones Remain is a series of paintings begun in the fall of 2001.

This body of work is a direct continuation and outgrowth of my most recent series, In the Skin of the Earth, begun in 1999. In In the Skin of the Earth the sunwashed, monumental presence of stone vessels/ urns dominated the picture plane.

With And the Stones Remain my preoccupation with stone objects continues. These stone objects, are grinding stones or mill stones fashioned by many of the world’s people. Long after the cultures have disappeared or changed these stones remain, leaving their ambiguous shapes to tell us their stories.

My method of painting is intimately related to erosion and excavation. The paintings are mixed media (primarily acrylic ) on birch, the technique one of layering and glazing then sanding and scraping to reveal the pigments and texture trapped beneath the surface. The impact of light and the effect of chiaroscuro in revealing these objects is a dominant factor in the paintings.

Vestiges of Stone is a small suite of drypoint prints, that is directly related to the two series of paintings mentioned above. The images are produced through burnishing and incising a heavily ground copper plate.

The methods of removal through sanding, scraping and burnishing in both paint and print are integral to the development of these images that glow from within yet are only partially revealed to the viewer.

~Karen Curry, 2003

But a lifetime burning in every moment
And not the lifetime of one man only
But of old stones that cannot be deciphered
T.S. Eliot