We reached out to artists whose work we admire and asked them five questions. In this series, ‘In Focus: Five Questions with ArtThrob‘, we spotlight the unique approaches of contemporary artists, offering them a platform to share insights into their artistic process, ongoing work, and the parameters that define their practice.

Cathy Abraham’s work brings together seemingly disparate entities through a ritual-based practice. The psychological, the spiritual and the ecological. While she has used a range of mediums reflecting her subject matters, including film, installation and sculpture, Abraham currently focuses on repetitive processes in abstract painting and drawing. She works systematically, counting brushstrokes using numbers from Kabbalah as a way to unlock meaning and open up new understandings of the everyday.

Abraham specialised in process-based art at the Michaelis School of Fine Arts, University of Cape Town, where she graduated with a Master’s in Fine Art with Distinction in 2018.

Cathy Abraham, Untethering green. (Image by Mia Thom)

1.   What rituals do you engage in while making art? How have these practices changed over time?

The centre of my ritual practice is the act of counting. Using measure, either time-based, weight or counting numbers, forms the heart of the ritual as an underlying structure. Over time this practice has been adapted to specific works depending on the materiality of the work (painting, drawing, sculpture or performance). My creative process is grounded in the choice of number as symbol. I have chosen to work with gematria, which is an alphanumerical system within the Jewish mysticism of Kabbalah. Each letter is ascribed a numerical value and it is these numbers that I use as the underlying composition of my works. The number 18 means ‘life’ and I use this number over and over again as a way to reinfuse ‘life’ back into that which is broken, discarded or under threat of extinction. Could be memories, loss, or environmental concerns. I always use a size 8 brush. The number 8 is symbolic of the supernatural or miracle. I believe it takes something superhuman just to be human and this number (on the brush I paint with) holds this energy. There are other numbers I use as well: multiples of 18, 13 which means love and unity, 22 which symbolizes the pathways between all the sefirot from the tree of life, 26 which is 2+6=8… and others. I use these numbers repeatedly in the count of brushstrokes and the measurements of the canvases. Working left to right and right to left, I am counting as I paint as a form of prayer.

2.     I’m thinking a lot about colour as a dematerialised object in recent years but also as an important means of conveying a deeper layer of meaning. Colour seems to play a pivotal role in your work, almost like a language of its own. Could you elaborate on how you approach colour and its significance? 

The role of colour is also symbolic, like the numbers. I am often working through the colours of the sefirot (from the tree of life). These emanations have colour translations, which operate very similarly to colour theory in painting and have their own systems of vibration and meaning. The colours, like the brush marks which are a metaphor for ghosts of past trauma, overlap and create new forms. The pigments I use to represent the spectrum of colours that I am working with are a brand of paint called Sennelier. These pigments stretch from light to dark so poetically and help to communicate ideas of trace and residue. My choice of colour is both emotional and symbolic.

Cathy Abraham, Come to me darkly. (Image by Matt Slater)

3.     The use of line or rather the “appearance” of it, is integral in how I would describe your work. How does the line find its way into your work, both consciously and subconsciously? And how do you read its presence?

This is such an incredible question as I am both surprised and reassured by the lines that emerge in my work. I did not start out in search of the line, however, the lines: curved, straight, wobbly are ultimately the visual language that forms all the works. For the scale drawings I am following the errors in my hand as a metaphor for the flaws in my own humanity and this ‘rule’ results in the illusion of curves and surface waves across the canvas. Unlike the rigid formation of perfect lines, this illusion holds movement.

4.     What are you currently thinking about in relation to your work? Are there any books, ideas, or concepts that are influencing your work right now?

I am constantly searching for the illusion of a shared humanity, a question which drives me to work all the time. So much of our world is polarised, filled with hatred and war and in response, out of sheer despair, I have turned to my art practice to try reach the depths of human suffering as a way to connect. I turn the texts and research based on nature, philosophy and mathematics as ways to find hope and unification. I am currently reading Jennifer Higgie’s book titled ‘The other side: A journey into Women, Art and the Spirit world’. Let me know if you need more book references too…

5.     Philosophically, conceptually, or otherwise, what do you believe art is for?

I am trying to find ways to connect personal stories of loss, betrayal, abuse, abandonment and human emotions such as fear and love with an overarching belief that we are all connected through our personal narratives within the backdrop of this world that we live in. I am searching for ways to connect these beliefs to the natural disasters that we face as a species too. I long to connect with others through these paintings. I have called my brushstrokes ‘ghosts’ as a metaphor. The pigment on the brush comes and goes like the ghosts of memory or actual ghosts do. Sometimes very intense when the brush is first dipped in paint, until it is very faint at the end of its allotted count, but always there is a residue. These memories, or ghosts, often occur simultaneously and overlap. The brushstrokes do this in the paintings too. I believe that we have a family or ancestors of artists over the centuries, and that as contemporary artists working in this time, we have the responsibility to continue conversations started many years ago. It is essential to study the Art History and understand where our lineages lie and who has already paved the way to communicate in the ways that artists today wish to communicate. I am working in the line of other artists who have used spirituality and abstraction of marks, repetition and process to gather thinking both philosophical and emotional. Artists like Agnes Martin, Roman Opolka, Lee Ufan from the Korean Dansaekhwa movement, Barnett Newman and Mark Rothko to name a few.