Cathie Joy Young offers expressive, loosely narrative paintings in a show titled, Balance. An observer doesn’t so much gaze at one of her paintings as enter into it and become immersed in an enchanted world teeming with implied stories in vibrant, saturated colors. Intriguingly mysterious figures are laced together with meandering lines and patterns that lead the viewer to discover a seemingly endless series of relationships. Fantastical beasts, gremlins, and goblins cavort with characters worthy of a medieval folk tale to form an intricate web of action across the entire surface.

Young looks to the past for her inspiration and is particularly influenced by ancient myths, legends, and medieval history and culture. Working in acrylic on wood panel, her process involves finding random patterns while painting, and encouraging them to evolve into symbolic figures, relationships, and structure. She works inch by inch, using small brushes to create tiny marks, interconnecting and crowding out negative space with highly detailed shapes and figures. Due to this intense complexity, her paintings are especially time-consuming to complete and she has worked on this current series for over two years.

A well-known artist whose work is easily recognizable throughout the Pacific Northwest, Young moved from Colorado to attend Pacific Northwest College of Art in Portland, Oregon where she received a BFA in Painting in 1989. She now lives and works in Vancouver, Washington. Since 2005, she has been exhibiting her artwork in galleries and juried art shows regionally and nationally, and her paintings were featured in several episodes of the television series, Portlandia.