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Photographer Kathy Andrew shoots with a medium-format camera. This provides a compromise between quality and spontaneity. (The Observer/CHRIS BAXTER).

Jeff Petersen

Staff Writer

Kathy Andrew is a different kind of interior decorator.

She paints with light. And captures movement to illustrate the temporal nature of life.

"One moment someone we love is here. The next moment they're not here. That's a lot of what my work conveys."

Andrew, 42, will give an artist's talk from 5 to 7 p.m. Monday to kick off the show. She will have several works in the show and will also be part of the Honored Artists of Eastern Oregon show this summer.

Andrew came to photography from an unusual route. First there was piano and then painting. Now she does a combination of photography and

painting.

"With photography you can be so free, take a lot of pictures, let the work evolve, see where it leads you," she says. "Instead of the 100 hours spent doing a painting, and being so cerebral about it, with photography you can follow what you're drawn to."

Andrew shoots with a medium-format camera. This provides a compromise between quality and spontaneity.

"A bigger-format camera is more cumbersome," she says. "The

photos become more studied than

spontaneous."

The photographer she identifies with most is Harry Callahan, a master of finding subject matter close to home and making simple experiences new again through his unique vision.

"He started as an amateur and eventually taught at a university," she says. "He's my inspiration."

Her Aha! moment, or big break, came during three years of living in England. There, for the first time in her life, she was able to devote herself full-time to her art. Her husband Colin, from England, is a chemistry professor at Eastern Oregon University.

While in England she spent a lot of time in churches and cathedrals. In such places of inspiration, she found her artists' voice with photography — and came up with a product that is uniquely hers.

Still, she is modest about her accomplishments. What she does, she says, is nothing new. As she says, people have been coloring photographs for a long time. And people have always captured movement in

photography.

Andrew brings her own touch to these traditions. She finds an interior she likes. Then, using remote control, she performs an action in the photo, or has someone else perform an action. She gets a pattern of movement that can

turn the ordinary into the

fantastic.

Her science background — she has degrees in chemistry and environmental science — helps her master the technical aspects of photography.

"It helps me understand the analytical side of creating art," she says.

All of it combines to help her reach her goal: a work that moves the viewer. Andrew's is an unusual form of interior decorating, one that conveys not only the familiarity and warmth of home but the fragile and tenuous nature of life.