Award Winner Painting

Katherine Strause “A picture is a secret about a secret, the more it tells you the less you know.” ― Diane Arbus Using discarded or found photographs as the basis for her compositions, Katherine Strause gives the individuals in her paintings another life and dimension when they could have easily just have been discarded or forgotten. Given a collection of estate photographs from the 1920s and 1950s furthered her interest in memory and how memories are made and kept alive. She once asked—“who will look at our photos when we are gone?” But her paintings are not purely documentary or nostalgic as Strause alters and re-arranges the compositions to provide us with candid, colorful, psychological glimpses into the lives of young girls, women, family, and friends. Painters have long used photography as a way to help them recall and capture fleeting moments and experiences in their studios. Strause flips that process on its head by using ready-made snap shots and turns them into something new. These are real people with real lives—most originally posed for a photographer (first viewer) and now pose for Strause who bravely takes liberty in re-interpreting. She states “…I approach these images as subject matter and create my own relationship with these individuals. These portraits possess a look of determination and hope. They represent us all.” Themes of childhood, marriage, friendship, aging, social constraints or struggles connect viewers to the past and present. Shared yet individual experiences find their way into paintings such as Saturday. Strause shows a casually posed group of girlfriends reacting to the photographer—he or she seems to have just told joke or made some comment. Each girl’s expression is unique…the girls in the center seem a bit skeptical, the girl in white on the far right laughs, and the redheaded girl on the far left seems to flirt. In the foreground, a bent-over tired, embarrassed, or laughing bike rider anchors the scene. In this image and others, Strause prompts viewers to recall those moments of adolescence and what it means to have girlfriends. Strause’s exploration of these subjects and her use of color has a significant impact on the emotive quality of her paintings. The idea of taking old black and white photographs and infusing them Many of Strause’s paintings address women, work, and growing up white in the south.