GALLERY NEWS

Watch the video and read the Q & A with artist Katie DeGroot below.

Katie DeGroot is a New York-based artist living on her great-grandparents farm in New York. Using branches as an observational starting point, the watercolor painter, responds within the language of contemporary art, arranging her muses to interact between themselves to form an anthropomorphic story. Read the Q & A with the watercolor painter for Nature’s Narratives, on view January 13 to January 31, 2024.

What narrative does your work tell?

I find my narratives organically while out walking in the woods where I might find an exceptionally expressive stick/limb/muse that I can imagine interacting with other muses in my studio. I also think about human interactions in groups both large and small, and use the collection of muses I have to create a story.

How does the narrative of nature relate to or is different than your own inner landscape?

I would say that looking at and observing nature closely lets me notice the subtle, and not so subtle, individuality and personality of branches and trees and think about them in the context of a narrative.

How do you approach a new idea? Or, how do the elements from the landscape before you inspire a new idea?

I have filled many sketchbooks thinking about, and trying out ideas for paintings!

What in your process brings you the most joy?

All of it!

How do you feel when looking at a blank canvas or page? How do you overcome or embrace that feeling?

I had great advice from a good friend and curator years ago when I was hesitating about starting larger work. She said, “you have to just do the work, some might fail but some others will be great”, and I think that applies to making art in general. So, I love to start new work!

I love the interaction of these found elements and the anthropomorphism applied in your studio and explained in the titles of each work. How do these ideas come to you?

It’s how my brain works, that’s what makes me an artist 🙂

What feeling, moment or story are you portraying in these series?

Trees are individuals. Trees grow to survive, adapting to their given environment, growing into strange shapes, producing oddly shaped limbs, becoming contortionists to get to sunlight, and bowing to the will of other larger neighboring trees. They grow in context to each other and their neighbors, adapting as best they can to the situation they find themselves in. In many ways they are similar to us, part of a larger community, whose varied geography and specific environments challenge and form us as individuals.

What would you want a viewer to know about your work?  Or what feeling do you imagine your work evokes in a viewer?

I think it is important to really look at the world around us. Not just the trees – we are all individuals quirky in our own way. I hope that in the viewers’ next walk in nature they see the tree, not just the woods.

Learn more about Katie DeGroot and view her work.