Katharine Palmer

My work consists of landscape paintings that are covered with a pieced fabric overlay, to represent the cloth that covers us and filters much of our interaction with the world. The cloth between us and the world protects, obscures, conceals, and reveals our experiences.

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My grandmother was a drapery maker. She had an over-sized table in her basement, covered in padded thick canvas, upon which to measure and pin her large pieces of fabric.

That basement was ringed with upper windows on two sides that allowed square beams of light to infiltrate at just the right time of day. The lengths of fanciful fringes and braiding were tucked away under sewing machines and tables, attached to Styrofoam forms with large T pins. I remember sitting under those tables as a child, on the aged floor, pairing and stabbing the fringe into decorative layers while the other children played upstairs with more traditional toys. I don't know if she knew I was down there in the basement, with the old black and white tube television encased in a wood cabinet. My guess is that she did know, and that she allowed me to create. She was also an artist.

Her skilled and thoughtful approach to painting filled me with awe, and I loved to take a peek at what wa...

1999 - Occidental College, BA - Art History and the Visual Arts