View a slideshow of Carol Kemp’s work.
Some of the earliest evidence of human art is found in caves, where stony walls spring to life with the forms of various creatures, including those early people. Paleoanthropologists surmise that these representations were part of a ritualistic ceremony for our ancestors, underscoring the use of art as a mystical and religious tool throughout the rest of history.
From cave paintings to stained glass windows, from Vedic art to Native American animal totems, Lompoc artist Carol Kemp has made it her mission to study and digest the vast ocean of symbolic representation in mystical and religious artwork. This has informed her style in a deep way, Kemp told the Sun, and the fruits of her labor are currently on show at the Flying Goat Cellars in Lompoc’s Wine Ghetto.
The show is titled Sacred Downloads: Art as Communion and shows through April 17, featuring a variety of Kemp’s art, which she views as a practice.
“The work is definitely a form of communion and an expression of my spirituality,” she said. “You could say it’s a meditation where I’m connecting with something beyond me that we’re all a part of, and that’s what drives me.”
The show features plenty of paintings that include multiple layers of symbolic meaning. Unlike an abstract artist, Kemp includes a detailed description with each piece, guiding viewers through her thought process and intention for each work.
These symbols call back to a form of communication found in preliterate societies, Kemp explained, which employed direct visual expression to impart ideas.
“That’s how the universe speaks to me is through metaphor,” she said. “There was a time before people were literate, before the written word, and they had a symbolic language. Artists would paint paintings and there would be all these different symbols and things going on, and people understood that.”
Sacred Downloads isn’t limited to paintings. A sizable collection of Kemp’s sculpture and jewelry is also on display.
Kemp is a silversmith and a jeweler as well as a painter versed in oils, acrylics, and watercolor who teaches multiple classes on the varying media. She also does 3-D assemblage work including art books and other forms. Kemp said that Flying Goat Cellars is a perfect venue to share the variety of her work.
“It was important to be able to showcase all the different things that I have done and it’s all within the theme,” she said. “I don’t have that long of an attention span, there’s too many things to explore, so I’m sort of a Jill-of-all-trades.”
Kemp also gives symbolic psychic readings locally, and leads a few classes that pair journaling and art for personal spiritual exploration. What she does isn’t just about her, Kemp explained, but something everyone can be a part of.
“I think each and every one of us is here to wake up and discover that we are so much more than just this body that we feel,” she said. “That’s why I teach too, I really love showing people how to find that place of creativity within ourselves. All of us are creators.”
Arts Editor Joe Payne is pretty sure his totem animal is Felis Domesticus, the common house cat. Contact him at jpayne@santamariasun.com.
This article appears in Mar 24-31, 2016.