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Katie DeGroot defines herself as an artist – not as a cattle rancher, flower farmer, teacher, or any of the odd jobs she had over the 20 years she lived in New York City before moving to the countryside where she now paints full time, primarily watercolor portraits of subjects she picks up off the ground. The subjects: sticks, logs, and tree trunks found along her walks through the woods of the East Coast festooned with “accessories” – as she likes to call them – of moss, mushrooms, fungi, and lichen.
The artist’s practice and passion took hold in high school, when she took Saturday art classes at the Art Institute of Chicago, in a program aimed towards high school students, and Katie absorbed the art scene of Chicago. A regional group of artists in Chicago, “The Hairy Who” known for “funky figurative work,” came to mind when DeGroot reflected on creative influences over the years. A particular artist and work, that of Gladys Nilsson, a Chicago-based American artist known for her wild, densely layered and intricately colored watercolors, and a work titled “The Cocktail Party” seen on the wall of a collector’s home, inspired the thought during one walk that “these trees could be having a cocktail party.” But that thought would come long after seeing the painting.
In college, she majored in printmaking under the guise of becoming an art teacher, but she secretly didn’t take the art education classes she told her dad she would take, a story that emerged when asked about advice that ended up being really good or bad. She was hired as an art teacher anyway, and later ran the Skidmore College Summer Studio Art Program. Upon moving to New York City, she couldn’t afford both a print studio and a painting studio which she had in her loft, so she became a painter. During an artist residency at Yaddo in Saratoga Springs, NY, DeGroot began working with watercolor, appreciating the vibrancy of color, the light that passes through the medium, and the ease of use and nontoxic materials.
Eventually, Katie left the city and planted roots on DeGroot Road in her grandfather’s house, a place of much importance to her childhood where her grandfather and great grandfather ran neighboring dairy farms. She lives in what her grandfather referred to as “Katie’s House,” which stood empty for 8 years after her great grandfather passed and her grandfather ran the dairies. Katie herself raised beef cattle for 13 years in her adult life, by her dad’s suggestion, and became a flower farmer with a CSA. Despite the intimate connections with flowers and cattle, Katie was never drawn to paint these living subjects, instead preferring what she found in decay and bringing them to life, much like she did with her grandfather’s house. “There’s nothing worse than a painting of a rose,” shared Katie, candidly. “You can’t make it as beautiful as a flower is.”
Now, she paints in her studio, walks her dog, and collects curious specimens. “I always work in series, and so I love having the object in the studio because every time I paint, I paint it differently; every time I look at it I see something else, and you don’t get that from a photograph,” shares DeGroot. “You don’t see flat – you see out of the corner of your eyes. I might trim the stick, or discover something completely different when I turn it over.” Early on, she painted individual sticks, focusing more on the shape than the adornments. She did take some good advice from a gallerist and friend who visited her studio and suggested she paint the sticks she had collected on walks as they were upon her studio wall: white background, interacting with each other. Thats when the first Cocktail Party images took form.
Creative inspirations from different art scenes and mediums across decades inspired DeGroot to explore series of her own. A documentary called “Burning Down the House” exploring the strike-a-pose trend of Voguing inspired her Vogue Series; “As Seen on the Streets,” a photography series by Bill Cunningham showing scenes of NYC, inspired her own series of her figurative subjects in high fashion; a short video by Jonny Carson showing couples in various sleep positions throughout the night inspired her most recent “Sleep Positions” series.
“I can’t just walk through the woods without looking at the trees,” shares DeGroot while out on a walk. However, this affinity and close appreciation was learned in her post-city life. “When I moved here, I just saw trees: trees were trees. But then I started walking my dog, a corgi, and I started finding sticks on the ground that were covered in lichen, moss and mushrooms. There is no lollipop tree; they’re incredibly individual with a personality. I pick up branches – they’re my muses in my studio. What interests me now is the variety and the color. Sometimes you’ll walk through the woods and find purple or bright orange mushrooms on trees. Of course, the mushrooms and moss come out when it’s wet, so this summer’s been pretty amazing. I’m lacking wall space in my studio.”
