Katherine Archibold

My work is an evolution of self-preservation—just as a child that must master the context of an unruly world.

My work is a self-expression of deep feelings, thoughts, and ideas —- that through time explore the depth and dimension of the human experience using symbology of sexual, primitive, animalistic, foliage, and imaginative characters.

My work merges classical techniques, distortion of real subjects, fantasy illustration, vivid imagination, lack of adhere to visual principles, and optical illusions into amorphous, avant-garde creations.

Each piece originates from an autonomic process — subconscious mechanisms drawn upon real and hallucinatory experiences. I use complex patterns, living creatures, and natural elements in bizarre surrealistic interpretations.

The central message of my work plays with the dual identities of weakness to viciousness, agony to vitality, fear to conquest — how the fragility of the human condition that the power of the psyche to overcome adversity from the innate instinct of survival.

I have an apprenticeship education in the fine arts. I have worked vigorously to improve my technique and style from a young age. My work has never been available for the public because of personal eccentricity and ordeals. I have produced a great deal of works in different mediums, that have been hiding for decades, but its value cannot be buried for only personal indulgence.

I studied art since infancy in an art conservatory in Cali, Colombia, began using oil as a medium at six years old in adult classes.

After immigrating to the USA, I studied classical European realism under late Conchita Firgau, a renowned Venezuelan artist who attended her studies in Universidad de Bellas Artes de San Fernando in Spain and spend decades producing impressive masterpieces of classical art. I also dual-roled as her assistant teacher in the instruction of advanced students when I was an adolescent.

My appreciation for the arts was fostered and encouraged by my uncle, Angel Rayo, nephew of the late famous Colombian painter and sculptor, Omar Rayo, whose work is housed in his museum today open in Roldanillo, Colombia.

TBA