"I paint with soft pastels, mixing the pigments with my hands directly on the paper, blending and layering color over color with my fingers to create the transparent and reflective aspects of water, sand, clouds and skin. Using the rich, undiluted, colors from pastels, with the hands of a sculptor, I model the landscape and body, bathing it in light and shadow."

ABOUT

Katharine Gould resides in Santa Monica, CA. Her training as an artist began at age 17 and she spent 5 years in studio and academic classes. She received a combined BFA in Sculpture and Painting from the University of Chicago and the Art Institute of Chicago. Gould earned an MFA from the University of Chicago and taught Art History in the University’s extension program, and Sculpture at the University’s Midway Studios.

ARTIST STATEMENT

I came to love pastel through my figurative work. The transparency of skin, and the movement of light and shadow led me to carry my figurative work into the emerging world crisis of exodus and immigration. 

During the Covid lockdown I kept hearing Robert Frost's poem “something there is that doesn’t love a wall” which he read at my school assembly. Those words bring back memories that become paintings of seascapes which come from my childhood on the Atlantic coast, and my life today on the pacific coast. These pastel paintings reveal my lifelong love of the sea.