Kate Shepherd
| Kate Shepherd | |
|---|---|
| Born | 1961 (age 55–56) New York City, New York |
| Nationality | American |
| Known for | Painting |
Kate Shepherd (born 1961, in New York City) is an American artist. Known for her original use of intense color, scale and a delicate yet descriptive painted line, Shepherd's work has beautiful references to architecture, gesture and portraiture. Playing with perspective, Shepherd’s pieces are built on spatial complexity yet their surfaces are simple and clean. The viewer’s position is finely tuned in relation to the depicted image, establishing a contemplative resting place or a singular iconic impression to be absorbed at a glance. Her mother is actress Suzanne Shepherd.
She is represented by Galerie Lelong in New York City and Paris, Anthony Meier Fine Art in San Francisco, Barbara Krakow Gallery in Boston and Hiram Butler Gallery in Houston.
The surfaces of Kate Shepherd’s paintings are glossy, rich, and warm, even when the colors are cool. Made on large wood panels, the works feature compositions of thin white lines in oil applied to unmodulated fields of enamel. These lines appear chaotic at first—they form jagged angles, jointed curves, and sprays like fallen pins—but on sustained viewing, familiar shapes emerge.
Shepherd begins her work in SketchUp to build three dimensional models. The image, derived from both existing and imaginary forms, develops from specific reference sources. Whereas a sculptor might make a drawing to depict form on a 2D plane, Shepherd creates her paintings by drawing virtual sculpture. In reference to the old telephone game, where information is transmitted through multiple people often resulting in a distorted message by the end, Shepherd’s works are alienated from the original source. While one of these ingredients is the quirks of the computer program itself, the other is the chain of human communication, ranging from visitors to the studio, fabricators, and daily e-conversations with a technical assistant based overseas.
Shepherd also makes more blatant works about color using screen printing and painted wood. Some include triangles based in Josef Albers’ pedagogy. The wood works span from stackable toy blocks to jigsaw puzzles. In her sculpture and more monochromatic work, Shepherd achieves a fragmented sense of collapsed geometry. She is known for her mastery of optical intrigue and the psychology of space.
Shepherd has had solo exhibitions at the Phillips Collection, Washington D.C.; Portland Institute for Contemporary Art, Portland, Oregon; Otis College of Art & Design, Los Angeles, California; the Lannan Foundation, Santa Fe, New Mexico; and the Chinati Foundation, Marfa, Texas, among many gallery exhibitions.
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