ABOUT
Kathryn Pitt is a UK born artist that now lives and works in Los Angeles. A figurative and non-representational 2D artist, and a ceramicist, Kathryn has been involved with and featured in many exhibitions in California, throughout the US and overseas, whilst teaching art to children within her studio and as a docent at the Getty Museum. Kathryn has had three solo shows over the past seven years, the last in 2020 at Brittany Davis Gallery in Ojai, has curated several shows and has an honorable mention for her painting 'Red View' at the juried show 'Bold Expressions' at Northern California Arts, Sacramento.
STATEMENT
I am a painter who works in many medias: oils, acrylics, watercolor and encaustic and my art explores both the figurative and the abstract.
You will find many representations of the human form in my work, especially the female form. My paintings of the female body explore middle age and the changes that happen to us as we grow older. I observe, recognize, and celebrate such bodies in everyday poses with quiet reflection. Their bodies are my body. The human body has always been present in the history of art, and I am aware of its historical and cultural relevance. I am interested in continuing the tradition of exploring this subject matter within my own experience and intuition. Taking inspiration from the past, history guides me in shaping how I define what the subject matter means to me in my times. The female form has often been used in an exploitative, sexualized way. I wish to represent female forms in a more natural, realistic way, with poses that are fleeting moments in time and are not stylized. I want to describe the essence of the person, a feeling of a connection with them if only temporal.
In all my work, both the figurative and the more abstract, my overriding passion is color. I replicate the plethora of colors that I see in my work. How colors work with and against each other, how colors arrest the audience, and how colors can connect with a viewer. I want to make the passer stop, look, contemplate, and go deeper - to see the layers of color merge and emerge - how we get lost and see clearly.