Katherine Strause

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 rela...

EDUCATION AND CURRENT POSITION
2007 – present, Chair, Department of Art, Associate Professor in Painting, Henderson State University, Arkadelphia, Arkansas
1992 M.F.A., Painting, Southern Illinois University
at Edwardsville
1988 B.A., Visual Art, University of Arkansas at Little Rock

SOLO AND TWO PERSON EXHIBITIONS
2016 7/16 Scheduled Exhibition, Bozarts Art Gallery, Watervalley Mississippi
3/16 Argenta Gallery, North Little Rock Arkansas (3/16 – 5/15/2016)
2015 3/15 Katherine Strause and Nancy Dunaway, Gallery 26, Little Rock Arkansas (3/21-5/2/2015)
2014 9/14 People, Places, and Things, Arkansas Capital Group, Little Rock Arkansas (9/12/ - 12/14/2014)
7/14 Home Demonstration Clubs or How Women Saved Rural Arkansas, Butler Center Arkansas Studies
4/14 Cut and Tie, Pittsburg State University, Pittsburg Kansas
2012 5/12 Marathon, Gallery 26, Little Rock, Arkansas
2011 8/11 Katherine Strause, Narrative Paintings, Texarkana Regional Art Center, Texarkana, Texas
2010 9/10 Some Like It Hot, Art Church, Hot Springs, Arkansas
7/10 Bear Witness, Gallery 26, Little Rock, Arkansas
6/10 Witness, Mighty Fine Art, Dallas, Texas
3/10 An American Story, Bozarts Art Gallery, WatervalleyMississippi

REGIONAL, NATIONAL AND INTERNATIONAL JURIED EXHIBITIONS, PUBLICATIONS AND SCREENINGS
2015 9/12 Frauen Circus, Museum_Phase 6, Museumsausstellung 2015, International Art Fair of Contemporary
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