we interpret the world through the lens of memory
Welcome!
This is where I share my creative process, the inspirations that shape my art, and the ideas that resonate most deeply with me.
A theme that consistently threads through my work is the nature of memory - how moments that are often fleeting can transform and gain new depth when revisited. Marcel Proust captured this beautifully in one of my favorite quotes:
Memory serves as a material in my work, guiding me to explore what lingers and how it evolves over time.
As a viewer, you bring your own memories and understanding, adding layers of meaning to the work. Together, we create an ongoing dialogue that deepens the art itself.
It truly doesn’t get any better than that.
Warmly,
Kathleen
“The quality of a direct experience always eludes one, and that only in recollection could we grasp its real flavor.””
Process Video
Full Bio - click HERE
“When I saw this painting, I knew I wanted it immediately. It spoke to me - the face is half in shadow and half in light, representing the face we show to the world, and the hidden part of us that no one can see.
Brilliant! I am a big fan of her work.”
-Tom
Statement & Process
I work from memory, not as something fixed, but as something active and present. It moves through bodies, materials, and space, shaping how experience gathers and how it lingers, often in ways that are both seen and unseen.
Memory is not limited to personal history. I encounter it in figures, in marks, in structures, and in surfaces that feel worn or weathered. Because memory is invisible, it needs a place to settle. Forms offer that place. Sometimes they appear as a body. Other times as land, as a field, as repeated marks or fragments of structure. What matters is not the subject, but how form allows memory to take shape without being explained, holding what is known alongside what remains unknown.
I stay close to what lingers. Gesture. Pressure. Residue. The quiet traces that remain after something has passed through. What appears is guided as much by feeling as by sight, shaped by what is revealed and what stays hidden, by the tension between the known and the unknown.
The process is a give and take, a call and response. I listen, adjust, remove, and return. The work signals what needs to soften, what needs to shift, and what is allowed to remain unresolved, leaving space for what is seen and what is sensed.
What emerges is less about depiction and more about presence. Each piece holds a pause, a space where recognition and uncertainty exist together, and where memory continues to unfold between the seen and unseen.
Perspective shapes the work. It reshaped my relationship to mark making and memory.
My art practice took a meaningful turn when I moved from the bustling landscapes of Southern California to the quiet beauty of the Central Coast. Here, nestled beside an oak grove and a wildlife preserve, inspiration found me in new forms. California oak trees, rolling hills, and the rhythms of the natural world - day and night - began to shape my work in ways I couldn’t have imagined before the move.
“Art is an ongoing voyage, one of discovery, growth, and evolution, a journey that never truly ends.”
A significant moment came when a large beehive fell from an oak tree in our backyard. At first, the bees swarmed in chaos, needing time to process the collapse. Over the following weeks, their frantic activity softened, and eventually the hive stood silent.
I was captivated by the stillness .
Weeks later, wax moths emerged from the seemingly empty structure.The experience became an unexpected teacher. It spoke of resilience, of adaptation, and of the quiet, ongoing cycles of transformation. It reminded me that what appears still is often alive with unseen change.
Inspiration, I’ve found, is all around us - waiting in the everyday, in nature’s rhythms, and in the spaces we least expect.
This attentiveness to the unseen - what lingers beneath the surface - has become central to my painting practice. I paint from memory, not to recreate the past, but to explore the emotional residue it leaves behind. Faces and figures appear not as portraits, but as impressions - echoes of moments, shaped by the interplay of experience and time.