Kathryn Kane After a career in brand management and marketing for international and national counseling and nonprofit firms, Kathryn Kane now focuses on painting in watercolor and acrylics. Her special interest is in semi-abstract interpretations of mundane natural subjects: tree bark, tree mushrooms, ice, water. She has exhibited and won awards in a number of juried shows, including Northern Illinois University’s Community College Art Faculty Invitational &Juried Student Exhibition, DeKalb, IL; Northeastern Illinois
community college exhibition and competition, Chicago, IL. Celebrate, Contemplate, Flow Art Space, St. Paul, MN; The Abstract Show IV, the Brickton Gallery, Park Ridge, IL; and the New Orleans Art Association’s 2017 National Art Show. A selection of Kathryn’s paintings was on exhibit throughout 2016 at the Illinois Board of Higher Education in Springfield, IL.

She resides with her husband, Allen Giedraitis, an accomplished photographer, and their black cat, Ninja, in Park Ridge, IL.

Kathryn Kane:

I paint natural abstracts.  My subjects are drawn from nature, with compositions that focus on dynamic line, texture, space and color.  My goal is to produce work that is pleasing and arresting, encouraging the viewer to experience mystery, emotion and drama, and to perhaps join me in looking more closely at the wonders around us.

This approach has evolved.  A few years ago, watching Law & Order, I thought, “I’d make a terrible witness; I never notice anything.”  So I   started paying attention to my surroundings, beginning with trees, the only things visible after a blizzard.   I discovered creatures with a surprising variation of shape, surface and formation, scars, grace, sturdiness, age, in good and bad health.

But the muted natural palette was unsatisfying, forcing me to move past a strict naturalism.   I then experimented with texture on the canvas, using molding paste, sand, wood shavings, sawdust and plastic beads.

My subjects so far have expanded to tree mushrooms, water, ice, hot springs, lichen and more, turning mundane subjects into abstract art.   These ordinary subjects and the process fascinate me and offer so many aspects for exploration that I look forward to continuing these series.