Katherine’s workshop sessions are generally
divided into slide lectures, where Katherine discusses
the work of a range of contemporary artists with a
unique voice, and the painting studio, where students
receive personalized attention. For the fi rst two days,
Katherine devotes her attention to individual critiques.
She asks students to bring images of their (previous)
work in order to discuss their ideas, to examine what’s
working and what isn’t, and to help them develop strat-
egies for meeting the challenges and goals they want
to set for themselves. For the duration of the workshop,
the artists meet with Katherine throughout the day,
with time set aside during the painting studio for “talk,”
“talk-talk,” and “emergency”—informal categories that
correspond to a student’s ascending level of need.
During the morning slide lectures, Katherine
expands the conversation beyond the inspirations and
infl uences of the artists whose work is on view into a
broader discussion about the nature of art and fi nding
self-expression, sprinkled with witty and sometimes
tangential observations about current events, literature
and human behavior. On occasion, she will include a
series of slides to illustrate the
transformation of her own work
from the representational to
the abstract, from the pure lay-
ers of transparent color to the
multidimensional complexity of
mixed media, as she matured from a young, self-taught
painter into a seasoned professional artist. Katherine
attributes her evolution as a painter to a conscious deci-
sion she made early on to educate herself about art and
to be appreciative of the myriad ways in which other
artists develop the ideas in their work.
At the same time, Katherine cautions her students
about being unduly infl uenced by other artists: “Study
their work, absorb the lessons and then fi le the infor-
mation away somewhere in your subconscious.” Her
workshops are not about technique or learning to paint
like someone else; they are about individuality and
discovery. Some of her longtime students call her the
“Art Whisperer”—a label that seems to embarrass and
amuse her in equal measure—because of her ability to
understand what they are trying to say with their work,
“At every turn, there was yet another rocky inlet, another
tableau of moored fi shing vessels, another velveteen
marshland dotted with a soft confetti of snow-colored
egrets whose wings sparkled in the sunlight.”
ABOVE: The tail
end of Hurricane
Joaquin at Halibut
Point State Park in
Rockport, Mass.56 artistsmagazine.com
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