Katherine Mead

Katherine was born in Long Beach, California. She received a BFA with an emphasis in design from California State University at Long Beach. Katherine worked as an interior architectural, graphic and lighting designer in San Francisco, Los Angeles and Portland, Oregon, where she has resided for 26 years. She paints and creates from her studios in Sisters, Oregon and Palm Springs, California.

Starting as an art major in college she found her way to all things visual: architecture, graphic design, industrial, interior and lighting design. Her work is often rooted in her architectural background — the prism through which she seems to view the world. Graphic blocks of color, layers of paper and tissue create the base for which she then paints, sketches and marks. She is wholly intrigued with the idea of contrast. The beauty of something modern and unblemished juxtaposed against something aged and imperfect. She often finds that her intense sensitivity to light, color and shadow hinders her from seeing the world as others do.

" When you notice everything it can sometimes be overwhelming. I live in a world of detail and nuance. I sometimes find myself blocking out certain stimuli so I can focus on the task at hand. My creative spa...