"Cave Painting After Plato" 2025 Abstract Painting by Kathi Robinson Frank

58" H x 96" W Oil on Canvas

This large-scale oil painting evokes the primal energy of ancient mark-making while questioning the reliability of perception itself. Across a weathered, atmospheric ground, gestural black lines sweep and arc with immediacy, suggesting the fragmented outline of an animal form—part bull, part memory, part illusion. The composition feels both discovered and constructed, as if unearthed from a cave wall and simultaneously dissolving before our eyes. A layered palette of ochres, iron reds, soot blacks, and chalky whites dominates the surface, punctuated by flashes of muted gold and ash-gray. These earthy tones reference the mineral pigments of prehistoric painting, while their application, scraped, stained, and built up creates a sense of time embedded in the surface.

Somewhat unconsciously, the artist mimics the fractured, irregular planes of a cave interior. The ground appears eroded and uneven, with subtle shifts in texture that suggest cracks, deposits, and worn stone. This physical fragmentation mirrors the conceptual one: the subject refuses to fully resolve, hovering between representation and abstraction. The title plays on this duality recalling ancient depictions such as those found in Lascaux, while also alluding to the philosophical notion that perceived reality is often a constructed illusion. Like shadows cast on a cave wall, the forms here feel both immediate and deceptive, inviting the viewer to question whether they are witnessing something real, remembered, or entirely imagined. The painting is sold with a natural wood stretcher with a black liner.

Born in New York City, Robinson Frank began painting early in life. As a teenager, she studied at the Art Students League before earning her B.A. from Bard College, where her artistic vision was shaped by the expressive lineage of Helen Frankenthaler, Robert Rauschenberg, and Larry Rivers. Her work has been exhibited widely across the Northeast and beyond, including the Provincetown Art Association, the Kleinert/James Center in Woodstock, the Bell Gallery in Rhinebeck and Woodstock, AMP Gallery in Provincetown, MA, and the Wired Gallery in High Falls, New York. Kathi has had solo exhibitions at PS 209 Gallery in Stone Ridge and at the Wired Gallery and participated in many group shows including one at the FirstDibs Gallery in Manhattan.