even if they can’t quite articulate it themselves, and to
visualize the path they should take, even when they’re
not quite sure of their destination.
TAKING RISKS “Above all,” Katherine says,
“don’t be precious with your work.” In other words,
don’t cling to the familiar. Be objective about what
works and what’s grown stale. Allow yourself the
freedom to explore and be willing to search deep
inside yourself to discover something new. “It’s all
about the ideas,” she says; “art is just the end result
of the ideas.”
Early in her art career, an
unplanned detour from her job
as a pharmaceutical chemist,
Katherine found success with a
lyrical style of landscape paint-
ing that often favored the pro-
saic details—rocks, twigs, roots,
the reeds at water’s edge—over
dominant topographical features. With her usual self-
deprecating humor, she says the color palette of her
paintings fortuitously matched the trending shades in
sofas at the time. It was a lot of sofas; to keep up with
TOP AND ABOVE RIGHT:
Gloucester HarborABOVE LEFT: The former
Paint Factory is now
the headquarters of
Ocean Alliance, which
studies whales.58 artistsmagazine.com
54_tam1216Liu.indd 58 9/22/16 9:32 AM