​​ARTIST STATEMENT

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With wetlands and tributaries as subjects, Liminal explores moments of transition: the space before daylight, almost winter, the edge of spring, the moment before rain, the mirage of fog. Most of my time was spent in the marshes of Southeast Texas, where the air is wet and thick, and the horizons are long and thin, broken mostly by tall pines or squat willows.

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In the beginning, I set out to create my own Edward Steichen’s 1904 pictorial The Pond ­­– Moonrise, described by art critic Charles Caffin as “…the penumbra between the clear visibility of things and their total extinction into darkness.” Eventually, I began to take note of the constant struggle between the sun and the fog to illuminate and obscure the landscape.

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BIOGRAPHY

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Cathy Spence is a fine art photographer living and working in Beaumont, Texas. She received a Bachelor of Fine Arts degree from Lamar University.  Cathy has photographs in the Wittliff Collection of Southwestern and Mexican Photography, Museum of Fine Arts Houston, and the Humanities Research Center at the University of Texas in Austin. She was awarded the Houston Center of Photography Fellowship in 1998. Her work has been included in group shows: “Fotofest: New Discoveries,” PDNB Gallery, Dallas, Texas, 1998; “Will Power” Rudolph Poissant Gallery, Houston, Texas, 1998; “Nude,” PDNB Gallery, Dallas, Texas, 1999; “Braun, Francois, Spence, King,” Stephen L. Clark Gallery, Austin, Texas, 2001; and the traveling exhibition “Inside/Outside,” which showcased ten Texas women photographers selected by Anne Tucker, former curator of photography at MFAH. Her solo exhibitions “Saints and Satyrs” appeared at the Art Studio, Beaumont, Texas, 2000; and Stephen L. Clark Gallery, Austin, Texas, 2003; "Crooked Eye" at the Art Studio, 2020; and "Liminal" at the Dishman Art Museum, Beaumont, Texas, 2023.