Kat Almonte
Bio
Kat Almonte is an abstract painter and black & white film photographer. Their works are primarily created using the technique of automatism in swathes of paint. Light and shadows placed by the sun or artificial lights of the city inspire their photography. Almonte uses these overlays to show the parts of their formative years in their environment. Within their painting and photography lies the unconscious concept of their past. Primal screams from an adolescent Almonte were only silenced by their visually impactful shots of unbiased intention and the courage to see their surroundings as more than something that conflicts with their values.
Statement
I am an artist working primarily with black and white 35mm film and auto-acting abstract surrealism painting. Each medium presents its distinct challenges, but moving between them allows me to quiet my conscious thoughts. I shift from the painter's additive process to the photographer's subtractive one, seeing the world through a monochromatic lens, attuned entirely to raw light, deep shadow, and fleeting composition. My work explores the interplay of stillness and movement, and the past and the future. The grain of the film itself holds the stillness of a memory, while the captured moment speaks to life's constant motion. My driving force is not nostalgia, but by a familiar intuition, seeking the profound mystery within the mundane. The constraints of the film frame transform observation into art, moving beyond mere documentation.
This perspective is rooted in a lifelong sense of wonder, a theme connecting my earliest childhood snapshots to my work today. These photographs are for that inner child, for "little Kat," who found magic in the ordinary. Working with this classic format is a tribute to that era—when technology felt special, and the world was a monochrome dream to be explored before the streetlights came on.
