Kurt lives with his wife, Laura on a small rural farm in Southwest Missouri. They have 3 biological and 5 adopted children. Kurt has ministered with university students on a local campus for over 20 years. His art is deeply informed and inspired by this context. Kurt is pursuing a Doctor of Worship Studies with an emphasis on Theology and the Visual Arts. Caddy has exhibited work in Missouri, Pennsylvania, Montana, Colorado, Arkansas, and New York City.
My name is Kurt Caddy. I live in Southwest Missouri where I work at Southwest Baptist University. I am a visual artist immersed in abstract painting, abstract photography, and sculpture. I have been refining, experimenting, and clarifying my creatives processes and defining my creative concept since 2007. While visiting a Lakota Reservation in South Dakota, I encountered brokenness and despair. This experience with broken places and people would collide with my own brokenness and creative giftings to form the foundation my artistic concepts. The concept is in play before paint is ever applied to a surface. I work with paper which is made by pulverizing wood pulp and applying heat and pressure. The paper itself is a picture of beauty from brokenness. I Create many of the paints I use from crushed earth and minerals. The pigments are crushed and broken and something beautiful is made with them. When I use extruded polystyrene as a substrate it is distressed, with tools, rocks, glass, even a torch. I take these broken and distressed materials and labor to bring beauty from it. These images are then transformed by layers of color into images of intense and vibrant beauty filled with symbolism, meaning, and mystery. I also take photographs of broken, abandoned and forgotten spaces and transform them with layers of digital color.
Sarah Bernhardt, an exhibit curator, captures the essence of my art. “Kurt Caddy fills his canvases with colorful explosions. Caddy photographs ordinary and even mundane images of spaces that feel worn, broken, forsaken, or unresolved… He then colors them with layers of transparent digital color which transform these spaces into abstract pieces of beauty, wonder, mystery, and meaning. The textures, contrasts, symbols, and colors come together to create vibrant spiritual metaphors.”
I believe that art can be generative and transformative to the viewer and the greater culture. Every creative work is infused with the concept that brokenness can be transformed into a refined beauty. I like to call this, the ‘Art of Transformation.”
I am inspired by Makoto Fujimura. I won an artist workshop with him 2 years ago. It was an amazing experience and helped shape my concept, my vision, and my creative practice.
I have exhibited my work in the following places.
• The Driskall Fine Art Gallery. Southwest Baptist University
• The Juanita K Hammonds Hall. Springfield MO
• Evangel University
• The Story Gallery, Bentonville, AR
• Center for Arts Education Gallery, Van Buren, AR
• The San Mocos Gallery in Pennsylvania
• The Atlantic Gallery. New York City
• Yellowstone Theological Institute. Bozeman, Montana. Artist residency and exhibit
• Columbia Art League. Columbia, Missouri
