Exhibition - Carole Katchen Invitational

This exhibit spans the career of artist Carole Katchen, who began to exhibit her paintings in the 1970s. For Katchen, figure drawing is the essence of expression. She worked with live models 5 or 6 days a week, striving to capture in just a few lines the person’s form and spirit.

Katchen began her art career in Colorado, but even there her work was unique. She avoided nostalgic depictions of cowboys and Indians, focusing instead on the emotional reality of people in buses, markets and cafes. With the help of her mentor, artist Pawel Kontny, she found a small, but enthusiastic audience for her art and decided then to make it her life. Since then her art has been exhibited in galleries, museums and books on 6 continents.

Her paintings are deceptively simple. Every surface is carefully built with 15-25 layers of pastel or oil to achieve the perfect color, value and texture. Most important, every image is designed to convey a conversation: Who are these people? What are they saying, thinking, feeling? Through the years she has expanded her subject matter to include musicians and dancers, masters of the kitchen and the darlings of society. She focuses on facial expression, body language and relative placement to reveal the personalities of her subjects and the subtleties of their relationships.

Even in her landscapes she cuts out the unnecessary, using expressive shape and color to convey a unique atmosphere. She wants her viewer to know that this is one moment in time: it will never come again.

Katchen received the Master Pastellist designation from Pastel Society of America in 1996. Her two books on pastel painting are considered classics. She has written a total of 15 art instruction books on a wide range of subjects, published in French, German, Dutch, Chinese and English. She has also lectured on art in universities from California to Shanghai.

This exhibit provides a wonderful selection of Katchen’s work from character studies to café scenes as well as works from her travels in Scotland, Nigeria, South America and Asia. The viewer can see example of her pastel paintings, oils, drawings, etchings and woodblock prints, all in all, an impressive collection from an artist who is still painting today.