Bas Relief oil paintings inspired by folk art and fauvism, capturing everyday moments through forced perspectives, warped shapes, and 3 dimensional build up with cardboard, clay, thread and various other craft mediums to create humor, drama and texture.

With no obvious deep trauma to direct my life’s narrative, I depend on humor and keen observation to comment on my life, ranging from daily routines, life with my dog and family to thoughts and anxiety regarding social interactions, aging and body issues.

Anti Social Life

Modern Landscapes

Discarded Amazon shipping boxes are repurposed and sculpted into 3 dimensional mixed media narratives from an uneventful life

Amazon Tales

After the 2016 election I was frozen. For a year I could not find a direction to make art. When I finally gave myself permission to use my feelings of insanity and anxiety in my artmaking, these paintings poured out. Using Russian folk art as a visual guidepost and an inside joke, I set about capturing my angst. My goal is not to tell the viewer a story they already know, but to exorcise my personal discomfort, and hope that others may recognize their own feelings.


Russia, If You're Listening

My series of embroidered drawings explore teenagers in their private world. The world now available to all online. 

The images in this series began as Facebook photos of teens engaged in typical yet sometimes disturbing explorations of sex, alcohol, drugs and celebration. I then randomly paired them with comments found on various networking sites. Originally I was painting these images but once I began embroidering, a passion from my own adolescence, I felt the parental hand of concern and caring much more present. I chose a more traditional structure to acknowledge needlework platitudes such as “Bless This House” from the past while incorporating the iconic “thumbs up” and comment box from today’s Facebook page.

It is this 

Kathy Halper