Kat O'Connor

Artist Statement

What do we expect from a traditional portrait that takes away from the expression of the human being? Can the body, the hands, better express who that person is?

Read Full Artist Statement

What do we expect from a traditional portrait that takes away from the expression of the human being? Can the body, the hands, better express who that person is?

My paintings are portraits of individual women, but I want you to look at them differently. The face is not important, and rarely shown. I want you to see strength as conveyed by the gesture of hands and bodies. The hands tell us about the individual’s passion, her experiences, her wisdom, and her confidence. The hands have a grace and a strength. They are quiet, not voiceless.

Water becomes a form to materialize idea. My paintings capture what happens in a split second of weightlessness, a momentary realism in which rip currents tear away at the abyss and produce images and shapes that were once imperceptible. The body is the language of idea, loose and floating in the water, manipulable and giving. Explaining. Finding purpose. The paintings magnify strength rather than dissipate it.

Of particular interest to me is the conjunction of realism and abstraction. My current work seeks to explore the way realism can push into and through abstraction, like figures breaking the surface of water.

Becoming Color, 2018, oil on paper. 30x22” — *Becoming Color*, 2018, oil on paper. 30×22”

(Gold) Paula, 2019, oil on paper. 30x22” — *(Gold) Paula*, 2019, oil on paper. 30×22”

Artist Biography

Kat O’Connor earned a Bachelor of Arts in drawing with highest honors from Montana State University in 1990 and a Master of Fine Arts in painting from the University of Texas at San Antonio in 1995. O’Connor was awarded a Mass Cultural Council Fellowship for her drawings in 2018, and is honored to have received a Sam and Adele Golden Foundation for the Arts 2020 Residency. She received an Arts Worcester Material Needs Grant in 2017. She is a Copley Master in the Copley Society of Art in Boston, Massachusetts, and her work is included in many private and corporate collections. She has exhibited her work nationwide, including three solo shows at regional museums, and won numerous awards. O’Connor has shared her love of art with students at Southwest Texas State University, The University of Texas at San Antonio, Worcester State University, Worcester Art Museum, DeCordova Museum and Sculpture Park, and Emerson Umbrella in Concord, Massachusetts. She has lead landscape painting workshops in Maine, New Hampshire, Cape Cod, New Mexico, Italy, and Greece.

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